Re: What is a relational database?
Date: 1997/09/16
Message-ID: <news-reply.6230.00049974_at_sundialservices.com>#1/1
In article <8168_at_bftsi0.UUCP> joe_at_bftsi0.UUCP (Joe "We are Borg" Foster) writes:
>> >A relational database comprises of tables, some of which are
>> >related by common columns. ....
>> I see. I've heard that MS Access is OK, but Oracle is much better. For
>> PC apps (VB on Win95/NT) do you have a preference? Are there any
>> relational database programs which port from PC to unix? My program
>> apps (neual nets) access legacy databases on PC and unix. I have a
>> crude ascii version of the program that accesses flat files on PC and
>> unix. These are very portable but large and slow to work with. I need
>> to upgrade. My app is made to plug into a database. Is there one you
>> know about which crosses PC-Win, NT, RISC, SiliGraph, Apollo, Sun, HP,
>> VAX, and mainframe OS systems?
>Avoid Oracle if you can, since it's a real pain to set up and
>maintain. On one project, some of their own consultants failed
>after two weeks of trying to get their database server up and
>running on customer hardware, but we had SQL Server, originally
>based on Sybase code, up and running in half an hour. Sybase's
>product line supports a variety of server platforms, including
>Unix, NetWare, Windows NT, Windows 95, and even OS/2. See if they
>can meet your needs.
Another cross-platform program is Interbase (www.interbase.com). But from the point of view of your application, I would consider one of two possibilities.
IF the data you are storing fits well with the relational model, you should use "middleware" such as IDAPI or ODBC which can -link- to databases on many platforms. There is, however, overhead involved in doing each transfer.
If the data you are storing does NOT fit well with the relational model, consider a lower-level ISAM package for which you can obtain "C" source code. In other words, maybe ASCII isn't the way to go, but maybe a flat-file structure or a record-oriented structure (using binary records of your own devising) ... is. Received on Tue Sep 16 1997 - 00:00:00 CEST