Re: VIEWS compared to Nodes as Windows into data

Datatrieve was first built for the PDP-11, in circa 1978.It was modified for the VAX, in stages though about 1982. It continued to be used, with VAX DBMS and Rdb/VMS, through the 1980s. I don't know what's happened to it in the last 10 years.

I never heard of Datatrieve for the PC, but it would definitely have been a good idea!

The strengths of Datatrieve are that it could perform joins and restriction (at that time known as selection)
and eventually projections on data stored in files or databases. You could even cross data that was stored in two different databases!

Then it could turn around and present the data in a hierachical report form using its report generator,
which was a classic report generator, IMO. However, I should say that I don't have a wide background in that area of computing.

Remember when you first presented the Pizza Example in the form the Pick would present it?

Well, if I were given data in 3NF, and asked to convert it to data in, roughly, PICK format, I'd look around for good old Datatrieve, even today!

Maybe that's why I never had to make the Hobson's choice that you had to make, between "relational" and "hierachical". I had both, in one place!

The closest thing I've seen to good old Datatrieve in the non DEC world is a strange little product called SQR. It's since been renamed, but I don't remember what.

Some people used Datatrieve as a data management tool. It truly sucked for data management. Some people got a negative opinion about Datatrieve from that source. Received on Thu Apr 29 2004 - 14:29:05 CEST