isaac@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Isaac Balbin) (02/20/91)
Has anyone else experienced this: We have expanded our Masters by Coursework program by including a year long unit on OODBMS. We were banking (sic) on using a real live one to give the students some hands-on experience. The two that have come to light as being worthwhile (there may be others, so this isn't gospel) are Ontos and Gemstone. Sadly, neither of these companies has any concept of the VERY SMALL amounts of money available to University departments. We were quoted large amounts of money which became even larger when we said that 10-15 students (heaven forbid) would be using it. Do these companies have no vision? Can't they realise that the more people who use their tools and go out into the workforce the better off they will be. I am appalled. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Isaac Balbin, ACSNET: isaac@goanna.cs.rmit.OZ RMIT Department of Computer Science, Building 10, Level 11, Room 16, 124 La Trobe Street, INTERNET: isaac@goanna.cs.rmit.OZ.AU Melbourne, 3001, AUSTRALIA JANET: isaac%au.oz.rmit.cs.goanna@uk.ac.ukc Phone: +61 3 660 2348 BITNET: isaac%goanna.cs.rmit.OZ.AU@relay.cs.net Fax: +61 3 662 1617 UUCP:..!uunet!goanna.cs.rmit.OZ.AU!isaac --
marti@mint.inf.ethz.ch (Robert Marti) (02/20/91)
In article <4798@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> isaac@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Isaac Balbin) writes: >Has anyone else experienced this: >We were banking (sic) on using a real live [OODBMS in a Masters program] >to give the students some hands-on experience. [...] Sadly, neither >[Ontologic nor Servio Logic] have any concept of the VERY SMALL >amounts of money available to University departments. >We were quoted large amounts of money which became even larger when >we said that 10-15 students (heaven forbid) would be using it. We have made a similar experience with respect to expert system shells (Nexpert Object, to be precise). Their Swiss contributor, an obscure little firm by the name of Koller+Partners, apparently even made a few snide remarks at a recent public Nexpert presentation to the effect that the Computer Science Department of ETH were still living in the middle ages since they were not using their great product! As for using an OODBMS, you might want to consider using Postgres from UC Berkeley. Even though their system is "post-relational" rather than "object-oriented", it fulfills most of the requirements of an OODBMS as laid down in the "Object-Oriented Database Manifesto" by Messrs Atkinson, Bancilhon, Dittrich, and Maier. We're using Postgres in a research project and we're pretty happy with it so far. One caveat: Some of the more advanced functionality isn't fully implemented yet (but at least the manual says so ;-). -- Robert Marti | Phone: +41 1 254 72 60 Institut fur Informationssysteme | FAX: +41 1 262 39 73 ETH-Zentrum | E-Mail: marti@inf.ethz.ch CH-8092 Zurich, Switzerland |
ballou@databs.enet.dec.com (02/21/91)
In article <4798@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au>, isaac@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Isaac Balbin) writes: |> We have expanded our Masters by Coursework program by including |> a year long unit on OODBMS. We were banking (sic) on using a real live |> one to give the students some hands-on experience. |> The two that have come to light as being worthwhile (there may be others, |> so this isn't gospel) are Ontos and Gemstone. Why don't you give Objectivity a call ? The number is 1-800-688-8000. Nat Ballou DEC OODB