Re: What is Oracle?

If I may follow up Mike Stouts reply, a relational database management system also manages *transaction* and resolves conflicting access to data (particularly write accesses) at the finest level of granualarity. This way it is possible to maximize the throughput of several simulteneous writer/updaters to the database.

This could also be managed with ENQUE/DEQUE facilities in most operating systems, but a particular application could not have a global view of the usage of a database among several users so it would be difficult to control conflicting accesses at the application code level without all sorts of kludgery.

Admittedly, DBMS systems at this state of technology are resource hogs, but they do repay by providing safety, and integrity of the data, which would be difficult, if not impossible, with descrete applications.

Robert J. Kolker

-- 
"If you can't love the Constitution, then at least hate the Government"