In a message dated 03-07-97, Andrew Grillet said to David Noon about Db2/2

Hi Andrew,

AG>Oracle are giving away free CDs of the NT version of Oracle 7. They also
AG>give free CDs of the OS/2 version WITH FREE LANSERVER ADVANCED. 

George White has given me the telephone number for Sybase/Watcom SQL as a
60-day demo. Have you seen the number for Oracle?

AG>Thats a crying shame. I consider the screen drawing tools in dDase 
AG>really useful  - you can build incredibly powerful screens in minutes.

I haven't used them for over 10 years. I disliked them, but I expect they
have improved.

 DN> DOS .... bleah! You will be faced with ODBC and the limitations
 DN> imposed by that interface. Can you not use OS/2 full-screen sessions
 DN> instead? Use TSHELL and just tell 'em it's DOS.

AG>On a 286? I don't think so. I do have a copy of OS/2 1.3, but its not
AG>the answer. Anyway the HDs arn't big enough. And notebooks are
AG>expensive to upgrade.

If your client is still using 80286 hardware get paid in cash; do not accept
a cheque!

AG>I might try that for my own use. I am not a REXX wiz though.

Well, you know in which echo to ask. ... :-)

AG>Deadlocks are not our problem.

They will be as soon as you add a second unit of work. Database deadlocks
are Murphy's law raised to an extremely high power.

AG>The problem is that there is no concept of
AG>a trigger, and so validation and contingent operations are handled by
AG>bits of code that tend to get re-written many times, all slightly 
AG>differing.

You don't need triggers to address that problem, but trigger routines do
offer a straightforward solution.

AG>I really do need multi-platform client support. It is conceivable that
AG>the lowest level might be Win3.1 - but on very crappy machines.

As I said, avoid cheques!

AG>I am quite happy to go with an OS/2 server and use totally different
AG>client system - but I really want the same client code to run in
AG>all environments if possible.

Same source, but not same object code.

In that case, MicroFocus COBOL would be the technical choice, in spite of
the fact that COBOL is a despicable language in which to program. COBOL even
includes screen management statements that should provide you with the same
interface on all platforms.

There is a 16-bit MF COBOL compiler that supports 80286 machines (OS 1.x
and/or DOS) as well as 32-bit compilers for OS/2, NT, etc.

AG>Incidentally, Iexpect the transaction levels to be quite low - perhaps
AG>two or three per second. Each would probably ultimately reference three 
AG>to six physical tables.

AG>Presumably any half-baked pentium can manage this with SCSI disk drives.

An 80486 will handle that.

Regards

Dave

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