Re: Recommendations? Need image-capable DB

In article 95Jan6175628_at_teamos17.ericsson.se, eedrjb_at_teamos17.ericsson.se (Russell Bride) writes:
> In article <3ejl3d$5nv_at_portal.gmu.edu> eburger_at_osf1.gmu.edu (Eric W Burger) writes:
>
> <snip>
>
> I got this from Teresa ... must have been a muddle in the quoting
> coz I didn't start the thread :-)
>
> A few years ago I was evaluating DBMS' and, if memory serves,
> image/blob support was a strength for one called Empress. I had not
> heard of Empress before that time and it was not chosen because it was
> a little behind the times in other areas (couldn't do on-line backups,
> no triggers and stored procedures, etc.). But they were in the
> process of upgrading to include those types of features.
>
> Anyway, they are worth checking out -- it doesn't hurt to look. I
> looked in my old notes and Empress Software, Inc. is in Greenbelt,
> Maryland, USA at (301) 220-1919.
>
> Good luck
> Teresa Larson
>
> --
>
>

I have been unfortuantely using Empress for the past 3 yrs at my facility. I say unfortuantely because of the following reasons:

	1 - decision to use it was based on politics, not sound development practices
	2 - slow as hell!!  the overhead need to support it is tremendous!!  It has
            taken upwards to 12 hours to load 50,000 records into a dbms.  this
            dbms hasn't any locks (Empress has a hard time supporting locks!!),
            no indexing (Empress uses disk space like a alcoholic on a drinking
            benge, no keys, just your basic FLAT-FILE manager, which it really is!!
        3 - The report writer sucks!! slow as hell (since it uses the same db engine
            as the rest of the package)
        4 - haven't heard of any REAL users successfully using the 'blob' feature of
            the dbms.
        5 - Tech support in MD is excellent, the support out of Canada stinks.  They
            make you feel that your the idiot and you don't know what your doing!!

finally

        6 - TO DAMN EXPENSIVE!!! Look into Sybase, Informix, Ingres, and Oracle (in that order) instead of Empress

Just the thoughts of a dbms developer who has used every major dbms on the market.

These thoughts are my own and don't represent anyone else comments and/or thoughts Received on Tue Jan 10 1995 - 14:43:25 CET