Re: Can we solve this -- NFNF and non-1NF at Loggerheads

<lauri.pietarinen_at_atbusiness.com> wrote in message news:1107839360.930438.77350_at_o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...

> Now you would just have to have an app. development environment
> that understood what this list was all about. Maybe it would
> even be a good idea? The RM is a friendly model. It happily
> welcomes all kinds of approaces into its embrace.

Actually, there was a development application that understood data in both lists and relations, way back in 1978. I used it until about 1986, and occasionally ran across it until the late 90s.

I'm talking about DEC Datatrieve. Datatrieve could retrieve data stored in separate files and CROSS the data together, in order to operate on it relationally, but it could also list out data in a "list of lists" kind of format that is very reminiscent of the kind of thing Dawn keeps mentioning in connection with Pick.

Eventually, Datatrieve was extended to work with data in databases like VAX DBMS, VAX RDB/VMS, and through the SNA gateway, on data residing on an IBM mainframe.

Unfortunately, Datatrieve got a horrible reputaion for resource wasting among "real programmers". Some of that was deserved. But on balance, I'd say that the real programmers misunderestimated Datatrieve very badly. It was no substitute for a real DBMS, but it sure was handy! Received on Tue Feb 08 2005 - 14:52:49 CET