ralph@CS.ARIZONA.EDU ("Ralph Griswold") (10/23/90)
For anyone who is interested..... At Earlham College (Heard of it?) we undertook a project of intergrating Icon with the Oralce Relational Database. We are finished now, and the project seems to have alot of potential. Our interface is a new built in function called 'oracle' which accepts any SQL statement (Not SQL*PLUS). The information is returned through the list data type. All DMLs, DDL, and queries supported as well as a new built in &OracleError code. We chose Icon because it is such a strong language for use with strings and text. Our intergration, called OraConIt allows for sophisticated manipulation of the information returned. It could be used as a SQL front end, or as a report writer, or for DBAs be able to intergote the Data Dictionary and be able to process the data in a high-level laguage. Samples of code written in PRO*C and OraCon are very interesting to compare. (Of course OraCon takes less code.) We have developed only a VAX/VMS version, but conversion to any other platform should be painless. One needs the Oracle C run time library and the source code for that version of Icon. If you are interested by this little bit of info, (there is alot more) drop me a 'line' here. I would love to get some feedback on it. Thank you, The OraCon Group John Benjamin Johnb@yang.Earlham.Edu