Re: RDBMS-based Intranet groupware products vs Notes : RDBMS vs proprietary doc. storage

 Jean-Philippe JAVEL <jpjavel_at_worldnet.fr> wrote:
>First I'd like to mention that RDBMS's are "proprietary" formats as
>well. you access them via a "common" command set, namely SQL (as you
>can Notes), but the On-Disk structures of an Oracle DB are different
>from those of say a Sybase DB (as both are different from the Notes DB
>structure).

Ha, ha, ha! According to this definition, there is no such thing are an "open system" -- anything is proprietary!

"Open" means "a common interface", not a common core!

>Then there is the issue of whether an RDBMS is the right product for
>what you describe above. I think not, Notes excells at manitaining a
>dattabase of documents, and that is what you seem to be describing,
>trying to fit "thousands of Word, Excel etc. files" into an RDBMS
>might work, but the amount of work it would take to get them into the
>DB might be more trouble that it is worth.

Does it do version control? Check in, check out? I think not.... It's the application that matters, not just the data store.

>Next is cost, Lotus has done a study on Notes vs. Intranets, I'm
>pretty sure that it is on ther web site.
<snip>

Well, how about a study made by an independant 3rd party, such as IDC? IDC also prepared a study of Lotus Notes vs. Intranet and came to a very different conclusion...

>One last thing, I don't have the figures, but I'm willing to bet large
>amounts of money that "a bi-processor Sun Ultra 2, 256 Mo RAM" would

How about all the CPU and diskspace necessary to replicate a Notes database accross the entreprise?

A last comment -- Notes came out when there was no other similar product available. It did discover a niche and a need that people had for groupware. Today there other and better solutions. Let's keep our eyes and minds open!

Cheers,
Simone Received on Tue Jul 02 1996 - 00:00:00 CEST