Hi David,

-=> On 05 Mar 97  22:19:02 David Noon said to Andrew Grillet <=-

 DN> On Sunday, 97/03/02, Andrew Grillet wrote to David Noon about
"Db2/2"

 AG> I think it was in the Context of DB/2 vs Oracle, 

 DN> I have yet to get my hands on Oracle.
 
Oracle are giving away free CDs of the NT version of Oracle 7. They also
give free CDs of the OS/2 version WITH FREE LANSERVER ADVANCED. 
(Unfortunately with 60 day timeout)

 DN> There is no screen drawing facility. That is not a rightful component
 DN> of a DBMS. Only kiddy toys like FoxPro offer such things, to make up
 DN> for the DBMS features they lack, such as referential integrity,
 DN> deadlock resolution, etc.

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

The auto code generator feature has never worked properly, but might 
be useful if it did.


 DN> These latter features are essential in a multi-user environment.
 
I realise that without these, the system will eventually collapse in
a heap. Probably the same day we get a billion pound contract. Thats
the main reasonw e need to dump dBase really.

 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.

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

 DN> You can knock up a quick text-mode system in REXX, using a VIO
 DN> extension DLL such as RXWINDOW that comes with REXXLIB.

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

 DN> Alternatively, you might try an OS/2-hosted xBASE product like OnCmd,
 DN> but I think that might be PM and not support DOS clients. I'm not sure
 DN> how well xBASE products handle deadlocks, etc.

Deadlocks are not our problem. The problem is that there is no concept of
a trigger, and so validation and contingent operations are handled by
bits of code that tend to get re-written many times, all slightly 
differing. The biggest problem is that the underlying system is very 
flakey, and you can expect each new release to introduce more, and 
more serious bugs. I get the impression Borland want us to use an 
alternative product, and my test drive of Delphi was not very impressive.
(INTERBASE lost an entire database overnight - and pretended the hardware
did it!)

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

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

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

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

Andrew

... Smith & Wesson:  The original "Point-and-Click" interface.
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