Re: Call for an API standard for SQL statements

From: Dawn M. Wolthuis <dwolt_at_tincat-group.comREMOVE>
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 20:40:15 -0500
Message-ID: <clf16e$4ui$1_at_news.netins.net>


"Marshall Spight" <mspight_at_dnai.com> wrote in message news:U9xed.303652$D%.57475_at_attbi_s51...
> "Fredrik Bertilsson" <fredrik_bertilsson_at_passagen.se> wrote in message
news:31f7e57d.0410222120.66d13df_at_posting.google.com...
> > alfredo_at_ncs.es (Alfredo Novoa) wrote:
> > > >Everyone talks about this feature, but how often does a real business
app
> > > >change databases? Pretty much never.
> > >
> > > I agree, the programming languages change a lot more often than the
> > > DBMSs. I have seen a project with six or seven programming language
> > > changes but it always used Oracle.
> >
> > I strongly disagree. I have seen many customer request for database
> > vendor indepent applications. Most major ERP vendors have multiple
> > database vendor support. Only if you make custom tailored
> > applications, you can accept being tied to one database vendor.
>
> I don't think there's necessarily any real disagreement here.
>
> 1) Many customers ask for things they won't actually use.
> 2) ERP vendors fall in to the category of ISV that in another post
> I mentioned as being the one category of entity that can actually
> use DBMS independence because they deploy on many sites with
> many different customers DBMSs.
>
> I don't think customers *actually* need DBMS independence
> nearly as much as they think they do.

Both tools & applications that are written to be licensed to many companies need database independence. This is not typically because customers require such independence, but because one prospective customer uses one database and one another.

I recall when we didn't think that we needed to write applications to be OS-independent either (and some people who are tied to M$ still don't). But with OS's such as VMS, Primos, AS/400's OS, MVS, VM, OS/2, as well as HP's proprietary OS (not HP/UX) all out of play these days, there are definitely people who benefitted from OS-independent software and others who paid the price for the lack thereof. I suspect that the same could be true of proprietary databases once the db-equivalent software to linux is in wide distribution. smiles. --dawn Received on Sun Oct 24 2004 - 03:40:15 CEST

Original text of this message