[comp.databases] Empress info wanted

wright@hsi.UUCP (Gary Wright) (06/29/90)

Is anyone familiar with the Empress database system?  I'd be interested
in any comments good or bad you may have.

Thanks in advance.
-- 
Gary Wright                                                 ...!uunet!hsi!wright
3M Health Information Systems					  wright@hsi.com

mdeltoro@druco.ATT.COM (DeltoroMA) (07/03/90)

I have used EMPRESS for over three years and worked
with ORACLE for 7 months.  If I had to choose between the
two, I would select EMPRESS hands-down !!  It has excellent
4GL's - M-BUILDER and M-WRITER.  These tools are powerful and
very easy to use.  It's SQL implemention conforms to ANSI 
standards and offers some nice additions.

The biggest problem with EMPRESS is that is does not offer
a viable ESQL interface.  As of release 3.x, all ESQL code
had to be placed into one module.  Evidently, EMPRESS is 
correcting this restriction in the release 4.0.

Overall, EMPRESS is an excellent RDBMS.  The major problem with it is
name recognition.

I never realized how good EMPRESS is until I used ORACLE.
-- 
**********************************************************************
Michael 'DT' Del Toro, Consultant                         303-538-1764
Analysts International Corporation
Presently at AT+T Bell Labs, 120th + Huron, Denver, CO

nmm@apss.ab.ca (Neil McCulloch) (07/11/90)

In article <4923@druco.ATT.COM>, mdeltoro@druco.ATT.COM (DeltoroMA) writes:
> I have used EMPRESS for over three years and worked
> with ORACLE for 7 months.  If I had to choose between the
> two, I would select EMPRESS hands-down !!  It has excellent
> 4GL's - M-BUILDER and M-WRITER.  These tools are powerful and
> very easy to use.  It's SQL implemention conforms to ANSI 
> standards and offers some nice additions.

Empress also allows adding user-defined functions to both M-Builder
and SQL.  Really useful for that odd occasion when the time data types
are not quite what you wanted for example.

Also, there was some discussion in c.db re supporting graphical data.
Empress supports this implicitly and with extensibility built in
the sky's the limit.  Now, if only I could persuade my boss to buy
me a sparc station...

Support out of Toronto for us ( a small site ) has always been 
good.  It would be nice if there was a strong user group network
though.

neil  

Neil McCulloch
Alberta Public Safety Services
10320 146 St, Edmonton AB             (403) 451-7174