Re: New RDBMS implementation

Em Tue, 04 May 2004 16:46:57 -0700, Alfredo Novoa escreveu:

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

        Not specifically, but I remember checking some existing ones quite some time ago and it didn't seem specially difficult. Commented the idea with Nathan, he liked it and mentioned it sometimes requested by prospective clients, presumably the same ones who request a POSIX port.

>> > You can build a complex script and to send it to the DBMS.
>> 
>> 	Yep... what I do mean is when you want to do something like
>> SQL embedded in COBOL or C.

        Do you mean sending COBOL or C to the DBMS? You lost me here...

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

        Check their release notes for details, but they decided the type hierarchy wasn't worth the trouble. Looks like their informal, virtual review board made by Date, Darwen and others didn't protest, at least not loudly.

> It would be possible to create a Java/C coders friendly version of
> Tutorial D and another for the Basic or Pascal coders. VB .Net and C# have
> almost indentical semantics, to chose one of the other is a matter of
> taste. We could do the same with Tutorial D and D4.

        That'd be nice. I wasn't so much thinking about Tutorial D and D4 interoperability, since Pascal isn't so much more respectable than IBMese in hackerdom, but about something C-like and something functional perhaps.

        Nathan thinks similarly to you here, perhaps even more radically: if I remember well, he said 'anything that generates the same compiler tree' or something to that effect. I'm probably misquoting, being totally ignorant of compilers.

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

        It's all Lisp. Also Sabre seems to be 100% Lisp.

        Not to mention GNUCash, AutoLisp, TeXmacs and Emacs itself.

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

        Yes, but they will put you out if you turn to be a competitor.

        Haven't you heard the rumour that in the US venture capitalists won't fund competitors to MS, because the risk of being stamped out instead of bought out by them is too big? Or that at a MS-WCE conference there was a line to the questions microphone where people wanted to describe their projects and ask MS representatives if they didn't intend to enter that particular niche?

> SharpDevelop is not a bad option. Eclipse could be another, but I don't
> know it.

        I had forgotten about #Develope, but Eclipse is Java which you dislike.

>> 	So what?  It just proves almost everybody you know is in the
>> MS camp.

        Not ignoring, but ensuring you get portability and less competition. And freedom from patents, have you seen /. today?

>> This is the big issue for me.  MS has a huge cost in my country... and I
>> like it free as in freedom.

        I am aware of that. But being aware doesn't help.

> Very few people can take advantage on the source code. I don't have any
> interest in having the Windows source code. Some parts of the Windows 2000
> and Windows NT source code were stolen and published in the net but they
> are not useful to me.

        They were not stolen, they were leaked by a Microsoft partner. A leak is a copy right violation, it is not stealing.

        One takes advantage of source code not by changing the OS but by having the possibility of doing that. It enables debugging in some cases and the satisfaction of special needs in some others, but the main benefits are open standards (POSIX and the such), permanence and accessibility, and lower platform costs both in acquisition and in efficiency.

>> 	Apart from popularity?

        Quite obvious, being a later arriver enabled it to learn from Java.

> .Net Windows forms are a lot better than Java Swing, you may use different
> languages and it is very easy and cheap to create your own language, it
> has better performance, the libraries are a lot better, it is more
> innovative, it has a more promising future, it has better integration with
> leading tools like MS Office and Crystal Reports, it is more user friendly
> and productive, etc, etc.

        Java developers seem to disagree quite a lot from you. Specifically integration with MS products can be counterproductive as it may mean strengthening proprietariness and a competitor.

        But it is your code.

> Portability is not a big concern for us because Windows is everywhere in
> our sector and the MS guys are porting the framework to other hardware
> platforms. Light fast rich graphical user interfaces are the key.

        Hardware platforms are not significant, they exist only in the MS WCE space, and that's for PDAs, WinTerms and the like.

        OS portability would be the key. They did only a token effort, namely Rotor, which seemingly is going nowhere, and it remains to be seen if .GNU and Mono won't be torpedoed by copy right and patent claims -- MS has been accelerating USPTO filing to the tune of ten a day.

> I tried that with FireBird which is not a lot worse than PostgreSQL
> and I am very regretted.

        FireBird is quite a different animal. It has its origins on the embedded space, while PostgreSQL has a relational pedigree.

        But again that's moot if you are going TransRelational-like.

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

        Hm, you can start with some articles about Zope or MySQL that recently made the rounds at /. and LWN, respectively http://slashdot.org./ and http://lwn.net./. The website for GNU Ada is in fact the one for the company maintaining and servicing it, and it seems to be quite popular with US gov contractors. Information about the GNU toolchain development and support has been harder to find since Cygnus merged with Red Hat, but they were known to be quite lucrative -- it is extensively used in the embedded market, and support contracts are quite pricey --, the same being true of ArsDigita in the collaborative website development space. I thing the website for Ghostscript is yet maintained by Aladin Software or something the like (*not* the makers of compression utilities), in fact its author earned early retirement licensing and supporting it for Postscript-compatible devices.

        There was a GNU listing of free software businesses, don't know if they are maintaining it.

        But the key is to realise money is in services, not licensing.

> On the other hand, almost all DBMS makers sell licenses including MySQL.

        That is part of the game. But MySQL only reached that spot by gaining visibility and developing fast, and freedom of software enabled that. Same is true about Ghostscript, which is also dual-licensed. For such an strategy, copyleft is fundamental.

        BTW PostgreSQL also has companies earning money servicing and selling licenses, check http://postgresql.org./.

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