Re: The IDS, the EDS and the DBMS

"Lauri Pietarinen" <lauri.pietarinen_at_atbusiness.com> wrote in message news:e9d83568.0409052248.2524b1d1_at_posting.google.com...
> But it has! As I understand it, the view-mechanism was created
> for just THAT purpose, from the very beginning. The problems have been
> in implementation: it has taken a long time for the DBMS-shops to take
> updatable views seriously - not that it is a simple problem, but
> probably a lot more could have been done earlier if it had
> been considered an important issue.

I always harp too much on this subject, but if you had known DEB Rdb as I did back in the early 80s, you might have a different opinion.

DEC had views in a little product called "Datatrieve" before DEC made its first relational DBMS. It was originally called Rdb/VMS and later called DEC Rdb and later called Oracle Rdb. Rdb had updateable views starting with version 1.

Version 1 also had "CREATE DOMAIN", although it was called "DEFINE FIELD". Version 1 also had "virtual database snapshots", which I guess is what database theory calls "multiversioning".

Rdb was a weak programming environment, but it was well interfaced to DEC COBOL, DEC FORTRAN, DEC BASIC, DEC C, DEC PL/1, and eventually, DEC Datatrieve. And if those interfaces weren't good enough for you, there was a sublanguage called SQLMOD, where you could write your SQL interface inside callable procedures, and call them from any language that produced object modules for the DEC linker.

In other words, it could talk to anything in the world, as long as the world only consisted of DEC things.

If you never heard of DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) it lasted from 1957 to 1998, when it was bought out by Compaq. At its peak, it was the second largest computer company in the world.

DEC's marketing of Rdb was atrocious.

> Note also, that from the very beginning (=1983), at least DB2 had a very
> elaborate and granular security mechanism (GRANT/REVOKE, etc...).
>
I once got a chance to teach a DEC Rdb course at a customer site where most of their work was with DB2. The clients technical people were true DB2 loyalists, but they were fairly favorably impressed with Rdb. I think they considered it "good enough for minicomputers". Received on Mon Sep 06 2004 - 18:59:10 CEST