matsumot@deimos.ADS.COM (Michael Matsumoto) (09/29/89)
I'm looking for commercial products that can support heterogeneous
distributed databases. The problem can be roughly summarized as
follows:
The site has multiple, independent databases running on a
variety of machines: IBM 3090's, Suns, Irises, PC's, Mac's,
Vaxen of various flavors, etc. If they could find an excuse,
they'd probably put a Cray and a Connection Machine in there.
Needless to say, various DBMSs are running on these machines.
The intention is to provide a mechanism whereby applications
can access data in a uniform fashion, regardless of where or
how the data is stored.
It has been a while since I've had to deal with this sort of thing.
I have read that commercial products are becoming available to support
such environments; in particular, Gardarin and Valduriez ("Relational
Databases and Knowledge Bases", Addison Wesley, 1989), single out
INGRES/STAR, stating:
"[INGRES/STAR]...allows heterogenous sites with different
operating systems and/or different DBMSs to be integrated
in a single database that can be accessed uniformly with
the SQL language."
The underlying approach apparently being the provision of gateways
that translate from one DBMS to another.
My question is (at last!): does anyone out there in networkland have
practical experience at this? Can you recommend INGRES/STAR? Are
other packages out there that can do the job as well, better, cheaper,
etc? (BTW, I've read the UNIX Review article on db gateways, so
thanks, anyway.)
Thanks,
----- Mike Matsumoto -----