tom@litle.COM (Tom Hampton) (12/11/89)
We are operating under the assumption that moving from a proprietary, index file based system to an RDMMS offers us a lot in terms of functionality. Presumably, members of this group agree. But how far can you take it: * how big are your databases? * how fast is your access? * does it make life that easy? Are we naive? What's it like in the real world? Do you ever wish you were operating with straight C rather than SQL?
jkrueger@dgis.dtic.dla.mil (Jon) (12/11/89)
tom@litle.COM (Tom Hampton) writes: >We [think maybe] moving from a proprietary, >index file based system to an RDMMS offers us [greater] >functionality ... But how far can you take it: > * how big are your databases? > * how fast is your access? > * does it make life that easy? Why not answer your own questions from the point of view of your current toolset? Don't see how any comparison can be done without a baseline. Also try answering the questions: what are your queries (by frequency of use, complexity, etc.)? what degree of data dependence can you tolerate? what's your production/development ratio? -- Jon -- Jonathan Krueger jkrueger@dtic.dla.mil uunet!dgis!jkrueger The Philip Morris Companies, Inc: without question the strongest and best argument for an anti-flag-waving amendment.
ben@hobbes.sybase.com (ben ullrich) (12/12/89)
i think jon's suggestions are more to the point, but on an even grander scale,
what do tom's necessarily have to do with whether a system is relational or
not? what i mean to say is that relational doesn't necessarily mean slow;
indeed, my favorite database prides itself on being as fast as possible, and it
thus works well under most circumstances. those other circumstances,
in which the database churns away forever, usually occur due to user
error or a bad database design. i think these problems are just as
possible in a non-relational system, one without relational's
benefits. to me, it is fundamentally necessary to have the FLEXIBLE
dbms under all applications, instead of an inflexible, proprietary, flat-design
index structure.
..ben
----
ben ullrich consider my words disclaimed,if you consider them at all
sybase, inc., emeryville, ca "When you deal with human beings, a certain
+1 (415) 596 - 3500 amount of nonsense is inevitable." - mike trout
ben@sybase.com {pyramid,pacbell,sun,lll-tis}!sybase!benghm@ccadfa.adfa.oz.au (geoffrey miller) (12/12/89)
In article <629320615.tom@litle.COM> tom@litle.COM (Tom Hampton) writes: >We are operating under the assumption that moving from a >proprietary, index file based system to an RDMMS offers us a lot in terms >of functionality. Presumably, members of this group agree. Not necessarily. At the risk of being hung for heresy, you can achieve many of the benefits of a relational data model without necessarily going to one of the so-called RDBMS packages. For example, there is a large and generally happy community using Pick and its variants, and while Pick is not an RDBMS in the sense of implementing the Commandments of Codd, it can be used very satisfactorily to implement data structures derived from a "relational" model. BTW, although I haven't tried implementing an object-oriented data model in a Pick environment yet, I can see no reason why it should not work well. Geoff Miller