UH2@PSUVM.BITNET (Lee Sailer) (02/18/88)
What can folks say about /rdb? I've just seen an ad for a new book about it that looks interesting. From what I can gather, /rdb is a collections of Unix shell tools and filters that makes the shell a useable relational database system. I assume that it goes far beyond the usual cut, paste, join, awk, sed interface to add such things as logical attribute names, assertions, derived columns, and so on. Anybody know more? /rdb folk--are you out there? Care to offer "non advertisement" description? Thanks, lee
UH2@PSUVM.BITNET (Lee Sailer) (04/03/88)
Since I mentioned /rdb, several people have asked me for the
reference.
I have no connection with them. This is NOT an ad.
A reference:
Unix Relational Database Management. Manis, Schaffer, and Jorgensen.
Prentice Hall, 1988.
/rdb is available from Robinson Schaffer Wright
711 California St.
Santa Cruz, CA 95060
(408) 429-6229marta@CS.UCLA.EDU (04/12/88)
I would like to get first-hand accounts of people who have used /rdb. We are considering for our facility but are concerned about how well it works in a distributed system. BTW, has this product been ported to other than unix machines [ie, does it run under ms-dos]? Please let us know if you have used its screen generating, report writing, prolog interface, menu building facilities [and whatever else you may have used]. Thanks for your time.
rob@phavl.UUCP (Robert Ransbottom) (08/05/89)
Several people have asked for info regarding "/rdb", so here:
There is a book about it:
Unix Relational Database Management: Application Development in the \
UNIX Environment
Rod Manis
Evan Schaffer
Robert Jorgensen
1988
Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632
0-13-938622-X
/rdb is from a place named Robinson Schaffer Wright,
Manis holds the (tm) on "/rdb".
Pricing is moderate????? about $500??????
My knowledge is limited -- if the book had had " with /rdb" tacked on the
end of the title, I wouldn't have bought it.
--
...!uunet!phavl!rob Robert Ransbottomhow@milhow1.UU.NET (Mike Howard) (08/07/89)
In article <267@phavl.UUCP> rob@phavl.UUCP (Robert Ransbottom) writes: > >Several people have asked for info regarding "/rdb", so here: > [deleted stuff] > >Pricing is moderate????? about $500?????? I bought a copy a while back (1-2 years) for Xenix 286 @ $900 or so. IMHO, it is not particularly inexpensive for what you get. > >My knowledge is limited -- if the book had had " with /rdb" tacked on the >end of the title, I wouldn't have bought it. >-- > ...!uunet!phavl!rob Robert Ransbottom My knowledge is limited also, however I have used /rdb for quite a few odds and ends in our business, but I would not use it for anything serious projects. The main thing that it did for me was avoid writing awk scripts for everything and to structure my data file a little more rigidly. Most of /rdb's ``commands'' are really procedures which eat a command line and create an awk script and then spawn an awk process to do the work. The copy I purchased contains a ``forms editor'' modelled after vi - meaning multi-mode, no backup, ... It can be made to work and apparently has been by other people, but it is definitely not state-of-the art. I would expect that any user would have to be trained in order to use ``ve'' - which is unreasonable today when almost everything can be menuized with context sensitive help & etc. -- Mike Howard uunet!milhow1!how or milhow1!how@uunet.uu.net