Re: Relational vs network vs hierarchic databases

"Ja Lar" <jalar_at_nomail.com> wrote in message news:cmps41$26m$1_at_news.net.uni-c.dk...
>
> "Laconic2" <laconic2_at_comcast.net> ....
>
> <snip>
>
>> What's the area of disagreement? Performance? Indexes slow things down,
>> compared to graphs of bundled pointers.
>
> The disagreement is about
>> > >>"Laconic2" <laconic2_at_comcast.net>...
>> > >>
>> > >>> Hierarchical and network databases DO have a performance edge over
>> > >>> relational databases, all other things being equal.
>
>> It's not significant. I hope I made that clear.
>
> Not clear to me at all.
> What is it that's not significant?
> How do you conclude a "performance edge", and what is "all other things"
> (to
> repeat myself).
>
Traversing by pointers is very, very fast. There is not doubt about it. However, there is a huge downside to hardcoding a data model by using pointers and fixed data segments. This should be obvious.

I believe what Laconic2 meant by saying "all other things equal" is that if we were to race a relational system and an IMS hierarchical system with *exactly* the same resources in terms of memory, processing power, platform characteristics, I/O capabilities, secondary storage, and inter-process communication overhead (which is probably not really possible), over fixed data access paths which correspond to how the hierarchy is formed in IMS, the IMS system would be and is faster (sub-second responses).

Laconic2 can correct me if this is not what he meant.

• Dan