Re: New RDBMS implementation

Em Tue, 04 May 2004 15:04:32 +0000, Alfredo Novoa escreveu:

>>	Nothing could be cheaper than using PostgreSQL as a device,
>>granted they will probably charge once they have their own thing.

        Not yet. It has been requested, and if I convince the bosses here we'll create one. No idea how soon yet.

> But it is not very comfortable to use PostgreSQL with windows.

        It wasn't. 7.5 is due to include a PostgreSQL port. And you can't beat the price... or the freedom.

> Do you have the .pdf version? It is a lot more readable and it has many
> drawings.

        I don't think I made local copies. I presume I can find them at the USPTO when needed...

>>> The published LARL grammar has many mistakes, it is a toy language and
>>> some constructions are ugly IMO.
>>
>>	I seem to remembered this was admitted by the authors
>>themselves...

        Don't remember. I do remember one of them saying it was only a toy language and it perhaps could be used by some free software implementation, but it would be really interesting to see something more polished, perhaps functional.

> I sent a version with many fixes to the author (a swedish guy who works
> for Mimer), but I think he misunderstood it.

        Ah, you mean the LARL grammar, not the language as published by D&D...

>>	Now what if one needs a data sublanguage in a host language?

        Yep... what I do mean is when you want to do something like SQL embedded in COBOL or C.

> Int32 is a subtype of int16 and int8 is a subtype of int 16.
>
> Integer is a subtype of numeric and so on.

        Have you noticed Alphora scrapped the type hierarchy in Dataphor 2?

>>> BTW what do you think about Tutorial D as a general purpose programming
>>> language?
>>
>>	It was never meant to be one.

        Sure it is, simply by virtue of being sane.

        But there are other considerations aside from sanity. Hackers (not crackers) are sure to hate the language syntax and keywords with its IBM-like syntax and keywords.

        But just to repeat, I'm not a coder. It has been some eight years since I last touched anything else than GNU Emacs Lisp, bash, SQL and the like.

> I am very skeptical about building business information systems without
> variables.

        Dunno. Have you seen what Paul Graham did in what has became Yahoo! Stores?

>>	Yes, the big issue for me to experiment with Dataphor is that
>>VisualStudio.Net is required.

        You are painting yourself in the MS, proprietary corner... you can't win at MS game.

>>	Java would get you the portability .Net is yet only
>>promising...

        So what? It just proves almost everybody you know is in the MS camp. This is the big issue for me. MS has a huge cost in my country... and I like it free as in freedom.

>> I'm not a coder, but I gather Java is not significantly
>>worse than .Net.

        Apart from popularity?

> IMO it is a lot better to start from scratch. I could spent many months
> trying to understand the code and I would be anchored to an obsolete
> architecture forever.

        Granted, if you mean to go the TransRelational way.

        OTOH PostgreSQL has a proven architecture, and given you control the language, a backend can always be substituted.

>>	There are quite some companies making big bucks by publishing
>>code and then supporting it.  Zope, the GNU toolchain, the GNU Ada
>>compilers, Ghostscript all work like that.

        It is about the only way of competing against MS, unless you're IBM...

> For instance Borland published the source code of Interbase and now they
> are losing a lot of sales due to Firebird.

        No, you got it wrong. Interbase was being scrapped, it was only when it was freed that Borland realised the value it had.

        Without freedom, it would probably be in the dustbin by now.

> I hope that something usable, but the priority is to have a DBMS for
> ourselves. Manuals and a nice Web page is not a priority.

        Tell us whenever that'll be.

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