HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: matt@iqsc.COM (Matt Reedy)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: SQL Access Group Application Interface
Keywords: SQL, API, UNIX, 4GL, SAG
Date: 22 Aug 92 17:01:01 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: IQ Software Corp.

In article <18AUG199209582102@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov> thompson@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov (William Thompson) writes:
>Does anyone know anything about the SQL Access Group (SAG), and about their
>standardized Application Interface (API)?  (I think I got the acronyms
>correct.)  I'm not a database programmer myself, but I've been recently looking
>into the question of buying a database product.  In our application there would
>also be other database applications belonging to other groups, which would be
>from a variety of vendors, but all SQL.  I've heard that each manufacturer uses
>a different standard for passing SQL queries and answers across the network,
>and that the SAG-API is supposed to address this issue, and try to standardize
>it.  Does anybody have any more details?
>

The SAG has endorsed a standard API (also called a CLI - Call Level Interface),
and there have been demonstrations by several of the RDBMS vendors showing
the same application program accessing the different databases using the
same API.  However, those were demos only, and as of today, the RDBMS vendors
still use different APIs (we work with Oracle, Informix, Ingres and Sybase
and they are all significantly different).

Microsoft has endorsed this standard and is producing a product called ODBC
(Open DataBase Connectivity) which is a Windows DLL that will allow an
application program to call the SAG standard set of SQL API calls and get
access to a variety of data sources.  Microsoft is busy getting database
and data access vendors to write ODBC drivers which will provide this
capability.

matt
Newsgroups: comp.databases
From: mwl1@cec2.wustl.edu (Michael W. Lichtenberg)
Subject: databases for visual basic
Organization: Washington University, St. Louis Mo.
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 17:14:09 GMT

	Hello all.  I'm looking for information on database add-ons for
Visual Basic.  Specifically, I need packages which will read and write
dBase III files.  Any suggestions (product names, companies) would be
greatly appreciated.  

Thanks in advance.

MICHAEL
mwl1@cec2.wustl.edu
(314)434-6422 ext. 31

Newsgroups: comp.databases,comp.databases.theory
From: luu@quark.ansto.gov.au (Liem Luu)
Subject: Re: Database Textbook
Followup-To: comp.databases.theory
Summary: How about a book called "Database System Concepts" by Korth &
	 Silberschatz published by McGRAW-HILL.
Organization: Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 06:45:58 GMT

From atom.ansto.gov.au!metro!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!news.cs.indiana.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!sdd.hp.com!caen!nuntius Tue Aug 18 13:29:36 EST 1992

In article <1992Aug13.202308.22198@coe.montana.edu> Bob Cimikowski,
cimo@cs.montana.edu writes:
>I am looking for a good textbook to use for a graduate database course.
>I would like to cover relational theory, normalization, and distributed
>databases, at the very least, and perhaps object-oriented, logic-based,
>and semantic models as well.  I would prefer to have all of this in a
>single book and would like to avoid using papers or books that are
>compilations of papers.


My favorite book is "An Introduction to Database Systems" by C.J. Date,
published by Addison-Wesley (ISBN 0-201-14201-5).   It comes in two
volumes, but Volume #1 will probably suit your purposes.  I has a number
of
chapters on relational theory, with an extended treatment of INGRES. 
There
are separate chapters on normalization, distributed systems, and semantic
modeling.




-- 
Liem Luu                                     E-mail: luu@nucleus.ansto.gov.au
ANSTO 
Australian Nuclear Science                   Phone : +61 2 717 3092
& Technology Organisation		     Fax   : +61 2 717 9273
From: stauffer@cc.swarthmore.edu (Glenn Stauffer)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Are you using the ABT college financial system?
Date: 14 Aug 92 15:14:40 GMT
Organization: Swarthmore College Computing Center
X-Xxdate: Fri, 14 Aug 92 16:14:34 GMT
X-Useragent: Nuntius v1.1.1d7

I am researching the college financial products from ABT (Applied
Business Technologies, Newtown Square, PA).

If you are using this product from or have any information about ABT and
would be willing to tell me about your experience and answer a few
questions, please send email to:

stauffer@cc.swarthmore.edu

Thank you

Glenn Stauffer
From: tmhoff@oogoody.Corp.Sun.COM (Todd Hoff)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: OODB Experiences/Opinions (Objectivity
Date: 20 Aug 92 16:01:38 GMT
Reply-To: tmhoff@oogoody.Corp.Sun.COM
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
NNTP-Posting-Host: oogoody.corp.sun.com

>
>I'd like to go even farther than Jacob and Marc.  From reading the
>article, I did not get the impression that the authors did a one month
>evaluation on each of the OODBMS's they describe.  It strongly
>appeared to me that for most of the products, they simply read the
>manual

APOLOGY ON 

I'd like to be somewhat of an apologist for product reviewers. I don't
condone sloppy work, but as someone who has written several product reviews
I can attest that it is not easy to do a good thorough review. First
the pay is lousy. To put the time in to do a good review of a complex
product means you get a small $/hr reward for your hard work. Second,
often your deadlines are tight for a variety of reasons. Third,
many products make it hard to do a good review. The manuals suck, problems
with installations can suck up all you review time, the company can be slow
in sending you the product in the first place and slow to send out
bug fixes, you may run into bugs that further sap your time, no decent example 
code is sent, etc.,etc.. The actual writing of a review is tough as well. 
Do you do "aw shucks" approach? Do create a giagantic attribute matrix and 
spend every minute of your week filling it out? Do you just give general 
impressions? Do you spend the time to try and find people who have used the product?

Software producers should make it easy to a review. They should make a
quality product that at least installs $#%! cleanly. Comparisons to othe
products should already be made and in the product documentation. Much
example code should be included, the kind of code someone needs to do
a good review. Have good documentation. If all the above and more is done
then people can concentrate on doing real reviews and not just fighting
fires all the time.

APOLOGY OFF

Hope this helps.
Newsgroups: comp.databases
From: marcs@slc.com (Marc San Soucie)
Subject: Re: OODB Experiences/Opinions (Objectivity)
Keywords: Objectivity, OODB, GemStone
Organization: Servio Corp, Beaverton Oregon, US
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 19:12:16 GMT

Evan McGinnis (bem@ESD.3Com.COM) writes:

> ameesh@lsil.com (Ameesh Desai) writes:

> [Description of Objectivity deleted]

> For a nice side-by-side comparison of several OODBMSs, people
> might want to check out:

> Journal of Object Oriented Programming. June 92. pp 27-43.


For those of you who have read or intend to read the above-referenced
article comparing several OODBMS's, here are some objections that our staff
have raised to the methodology and content of the article. It is our belief
that the article falls well short of presenting a fair and accurate report.

===============================================================================

1. At least some of the material is so dated that it cannot possibly be of
use in representing an accurate comparison of the products. E.g., for
Servio's product, the version of GemStone evaluated (Version 1.5c) stopped
shipping over two years ago. The product has evolved significantly in this
period and we are now shipping our third generation product, Version 3.0 of
GemStone.

2. It appears that not all of the products were evaluated at the same time.
Given the rate of advancement in object technology, comparisons must be
performed simultaneously, or nearly simultaneously, in order to be valid.
Specifically, it appears that the evaluation of at least one of the systems
compared was completed by May of 1990 and that evaluations of at least
several of the other systems were completed in May of 1991.

3. It appears that not all of the products were evaluated with equal rigor.
At least one of the evaluations appears to be based upon an evaluation copy
of the product, which was available to the authorUs for a period of one
month in early 1991. Evaluation of other products were based upon extensive
use. What is often apparent after extensive use is often not apparent
during a one month evaluation - for example usability, scalability and
robustness.

While Servio is proud that a two year old version of GemStone stood up well
against newer versions of other products, the review as performed does not
constitute a reasonable and accurate analysis.

    Jacob Stein
    Servio Corporation
    Alameda, California
    steinj@slc.com

    Marc San Soucie
    Servio Corporation
    Beaverton, Oregon
    marcs@slc.com
From: Tom_Gowdyk@mindlink.bc.ca (Tom Gowdyk)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Import ASCII to DBase III
Date: 13 Aug 92 19:23:32 GMT
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Distribution: world

Can someone tell me how to import an ASCII file into DBase 3.  The manuals are
not clear on how or even if I can do this.

Tom Gowdyk

Newsgroups: comp.databases
From: srb@barakam.b17d.ingr.com (Sreedhar Barakam)
Subject: Correction to my Sybase bug question: Re: Proposed Bug in Sybase 4.2
Organization: Intergraph Corp.,
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 14:33:34 GMT

In article <9208200432.AA06288@hplwk.hpl.hp.com> albert@HPLWK.HPL.HP.COM (Joseph Albert) writes:
>References: <1992Aug19.180433.16976@infonode.ingr.com>
>Sender: 
>Followup-To: 
>Distribution: 
>Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories -- Database Technology Dept
>Keywords: 
>
>In article <1992Aug19.180433.16976@infonode.ingr.com> srb@barakam.b17d.ingr.com (Sreedhar Barakam) writes:
>>I have a Sybase 4.2 server(on SunOS 4.1.2) which has two tables
>>t1,t2. They are populated like this:
>>
>>  t1  t2
>>  c1  c1
>>  1   1
>>      2
>>      3
>>      4
>>      5
>>      6
>>      7
>>      8
>>      9
>>     10
>>
>>For both of the following queries:
>>
>> select t1.c1 from t1,t2 where t1.c1 < t2.c1  
>>select * from t1 where c1 <any (select c1 from t2)
>>
>>The results are:
>> c1
>> -----------
>>           1
>>           1
>>           1
>>           1
>>           1
>>           1
>>           1
>>           1
>>           1
>
>This is NOT a bug, but the correct answer to the query according to the

< lengthy support for my query number 1 and why it is correct deleted. >

Excuse me folks; I seem to have posted the same article about Sybase bug twice.
First time I tried to post and saw that I have not fully explained myself and
tried to cancel it.  It did not seem to have worked.  There is a second article
with the same heading where I say only the query with <any is returning wrong
results.

What I tried to do in my first posting was give the two queries and say how
those two are returning same results.  First one was right and the second
one was returning wrong results.   Somehow SYBASE might be transforming the
query of type <any into the first query form. 

Let me come to SYBASE's defence and say that they said <any query probably
might be a bug and support department would have to verify this.  

First query is a join and the results are to be expected. Sorry for any
misunderstanding caused.

Sreedhar Barakam.
Newsgroups: comp.databases
From: oda@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Nik Trevallyn Jones)
Subject: ObjectStore in Australia
Summary: Object Design open in Australia
Keywords: object database ODBMS Australia
Organization: Sydney University Computing Service, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 02:33:04 GMT

For general information :

Object Design Pty Ltd is the Australian subsidiary of Object Design Inc.
(USA). They sell and support the ObjectStore Object Database (ODBMS) and
can be contacted on :

Object Design Pty Ltd (Australia)

Ph : (02) 589 0078
Fax: (02) 589 0078 (on switch)

Email : oda@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU

Nik Trevallyn-Jones.
From: zippy@cs.mcgill.ca (Fotis XIPOLITAKIS)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Public Domain C++ Database
Summary: I need an OO DB
Date: 12 Aug 92 14:03:29 GMT
Organization: SOCS - Mcgill University, Montreal, Canada

Hi,

	I'm doing research at McGill and am creating a tool which needs
database support. I'm looking for a reliable object oriented database
which is available to the general public. The only thing we have been
able to find so far is a package called Gras which is in C.

	Any help would be much appreciated... You can reply to this news
group or mail me directly... If there is sufficient intrest I can post a
summary of the responces I have recieved.

	Thanks in advance...
From: azn40@ccc.amdahl.com (Ashok Natesan)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Low-maintenance DBMS with a SQL interface
Date: 21 Aug 92 22:29:19 GMT
Reply-To: azn40@ccc.amdahl.com
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA

We write a lot of Embedded SQL applications in C to run on ORACLE on 
our mainframe at HQ.  We are looking into running some of these applications on
customer sites.  Ideally,  we need a very low (ideally zero) maintenance DBMS 
to support these applications at these sites.  Can anybody recommend any 
packages or vendors?

Again,  the operative requirement is LOW-MAINTENANCE.  We cannot have a DBA
per customer installation.  

We may also be able to get by with some file-system access packages (as opposed
to a full-fledged DBMS) but we need a SQL interface (ideally something similar
to ORACLE SQL) for application portability.

Can anybody out there provide any leads/references?  Also,  actual experience 
reports would be invaluable.

I'll post a summary if there is enough of a response. Thanks

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ashok Natesan				e-mail addr: azn40@ras.amdahl.com
Amdahl Corporation,                     
1250 E. Arques Ave (M/S 146),		Amdahl employees can reach me
Sunnyvale, CA 94088			through amail also.
					
Ph: (408)-746-8864
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Xref: sparky comp.databases:6188 comp.databases.theory:373
From: jyrki@uta.fi (Jyrki Nummenmaa)
Newsgroups: comp.databases,comp.databases.theory
Subject: Re: Database Textbook
Date: 19 Aug 92 12:09:49 GMT
Organization: University of Tampere, Finland

In article <1992Aug13.202308.22198@coe.montana.edu> cimo@cs.montana.edu (Bob Cimikowski) writes:
>I am looking for a good textbook to use for a graduate database course.
>I would like to cover relational theory, normalization, and distributed
>databases, at the very least, and perhaps object-oriented, logic-based,
>and semantic models as well.  I would prefer to have all of this in a
>single book and would like to avoid using papers or books that are
>compilations of papers.
>
>Can anyone recommend a good text?

I have been facing a similar problem recently. There are several
books I have considered. I will say a few words of each,
everything, of course, my own opinion. As a conclusion, none
of these books seemed to be alone sufficient for my course.

I also considered some books not mentioned here, but since I
do not have them here at hand, and I can not really remember
anymore how they related to these books, 
I won't say anything about them here.

C.J. Date, An Introduction to Database Systems, Vol 1.
 (the copy I have in my hands is from 1986, 4th edition)

- somebody else recommended this, but for a graduate level course
  I would believe that the text is much too introductory
- does not cover the theory much (if at all), in my opinion
- works more on the example and intuition level

B.C. Desai, An Introduction to Database Systems
  (1990)

- has some theory
- seems to be quite readable
- seems to cover your list of subjects fairly well
- was quite cheap hear in Finland, perhaps also in the US ?
- is still somewhat introductory, especially when compared to
  Maier's or perhaps Ullman's books

Elmasri and Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems

- has some theory
- seems to be quite readable
- also covers a wide list of topics
- is still somewhat introductory, especially when compared to
  Maier's or perhaps Ullman's books

Ullman, Principles of Database and Knowledge-Base Systems, Vols I and II

- more theory-oriented than the previous ones
- strong emphasis on knowledge-base systems, especially in Vol II
- Vol I covers the necessities for a basic course reasonably
- Vol II is a 'query processing volume', and query processing 
  issues are not much covered by Vol I (so if you only want one volume...)
- some people seem to like Ullman's style quite a lot, and some
  not so much

Maier, The Theory of Relational Databases

- a theory book, as the name says
- covers lots of the theory, also advanced issues
- restricted to the relational model
- probably not such a good self-study book
- has its own share of misprints

Jyrki

--
Opinions are mine
Newsgroups: comp.databases
From: rhidding@esk.compserv.utas.edu.au (Robert Andrew Hidding)
Subject: Re: How to trim down dBASE IV database file ?
Keywords: dbase IV file
Organization: University of Tasmania at Launceston
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 92 03:46:49 GMT

Try using the DBase command "PACK". Deleting a record only results in the
record being marked as deleted, but it isn't physically deleted until
"PACK"ed.
Newsgroups: comp.databases,comp.databases.theory
From: rcs91900@zach.fit.edu ( Charles Stockman /ADVISOR-Clutterham)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: How can select in variable attributes
Date: 14 Aug 92 18:38:31 GMT
Article-I.D.: winnie.4156
Organization: Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne USA

I am using sql in dbase4 and would like to handle this code from a .prs 
file

a = "input1 input2"
select a 
from test

a = "input 1"
select a 
from test

Is there anyway put variable amount of attributes in a select statement
From: thompson@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov (William Thompson, code 682.1, x2040)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: SQL Access Group Application Interface
Keywords: SQL, API, UNIX, 4GL, SAG
Date: 18 Aug 92 13:58:00 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: NASA/GSFC-Laboratory for Astronomy and Solar Physics
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.4-b1

Does anyone know anything about the SQL Access Group (SAG), and about their
standardized Application Interface (API)?  (I think I got the acronyms
correct.)  I'm not a database programmer myself, but I've been recently looking
into the question of buying a database product.  In our application there would
also be other database applications belonging to other groups, which would be
from a variety of vendors, but all SQL.  I've heard that each manufacturer uses
a different standard for passing SQL queries and answers across the network,
and that the SAG-API is supposed to address this issue, and try to standardize
it.  Does anybody have any more details?

On a related issue, can anybody suggest what 4GL products are out there for a
UNIX environment that has interfaces to a wide variety of SQL databases
(Oracle, Ingres, Sybase, Informix, etc.)?  I'm particularly interested in
products that support X-windows/Motif, with a GUI interface.

Thank you,

Bill Thompson
From: d8olsth@dtek.chalmers.se (Thomas Olsson)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Paradox for Windows Beta 2 and 3
Summary: How good is Paradox beta 2 and 3?
Keywords: paradox
Date: 23 Aug 92 10:47:47 GMT
Organization: Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg Sweden

Is there anybody out there that is a Paradox for Windows Beta tester?
How good is beta 2? Are there many bugs? When will beta 3 be released?
Is it possible to develop any programs?
When will the final product be released?

I am just about to start a project where I would need i database tool for
Windows. I am afraid it is a little bit too early. A lot of products are
going to be released in the near future. Microsoft is developing Sirrus
(romour says it will never be released since it is too slow) and FoxBase.
Borland is working on Paradox and DBase for Windows.

What are the alternatives? Writing in pure C is too slow. ObjectVision
is too slow.


--
  Chalmers  | USENET: d8olsth@dtek.chalmers.se | FIDONET: 2:203/104.15
 University | SNAIL:  Thomas Olsson            | Ph. +46 31 822239
     of     |         Dr Westrings gata 9b     | Fax +46 31 812139
 Technology |         413 24 Gothenburg SWEDEN |
Newsgroups: comp.databases,comp.databases.theory
From: luu@quark.ansto.gov.au (Liem Luu)
Subject: Re: Database Textbook
Followup-To: comp.databases.theory
Summary: How about "Database System Concepts" by Korth & Silberschatz
	 published by McGRAW-HILL. It covered everything you want except OODBMCS.
Organization: Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 04:04:44 GMT





-- 
Liem Luu                                     E-mail: luu@nucleus.ansto.gov.au
ANSTO 
Australian Nuclear Science                   Phone : +61 2 717 3092
& Technology Organisation		     Fax   : +61 2 717 9273
From: aflynn@osc.COM (Anthony Flynn)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Info on OODBMs needed
Date: 13 Aug 92 18:31:47 GMT
Organization: Versant Object Technology, Menlo Park, CA

In article <1992Aug5.095107.12612@phillip.edu.au> t9214309@phillip.edu.au writes:
>Dear Netters:
>We are looking for some OODBMs to run on a SPARC. Can someone out there give 
>me contact addresses (e-mail address preferred) and the approx. costs of the
>same? Addresses of Australian Dealers would be of immediate help. 
>Thanking you in advance.
>Nagesh
>e-mail address : t9214309@phillip.edu.au

Versant markets a full-function OODBMS together with associated DBA and
application developer tools. Versant is currently available on Sun-3, Sun-4, 
IBM RS/6000, HP 9000/400,700, DEC Ultrix and Sequent platforms. 

Ports to NeXT and OS/2 systems are scheduled for release in late 1992. A 
Windows/NT port is in progress.

Interfaces to 'C', 'C++' and Smalltalk-80 are supported.

Versant's address in the US is:

Attn: Mike Mooney
Versant Object Technology
4500 Bohannon Drive
Suite 200
Menlo Park, CA 94025
USA

Our Phone number is: (415) 329-7500
Our Fax Number is:   (415) 325-2380

We can also be contacted by E-Mail at the following addresses:

info@osc.com
aflynn@osc.com
From: mao@triplerock.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Mike Olson)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: distributed transactions
Date: 21 Aug 1992 16:46:01 GMT
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: triplerock.cs.berkeley.edu

In <BtC3E7.9yx@world.std.com>, edwards@world.std.com (Jonathan Edwards)
writes:

> In article <9208210244.AA07031@hplwk.hpl.hp.com> albert@HPLWK.HPL.HP.COM
> (Joseph Albert) writes:
>
> > If a non-blocking commit protocol is used, any transaction started at
> > a remote site which went down can be aborted, releasing its locks, and
> > leaving the database in a transaction-consistent state.
>
> Could you site some references or examples for this statement?
> Certainly the conventional 2-phase commit protocol (which is what is
> implemented by all commercial instances of distributed TP that I know of)
> can easily leave you in a blocked-or-inconsistent state.

the basic strategy is to add phases to the 2-phase protocol and to use
message broadcast, so every site sees every message.  see

    [SKEE81] Skeen, D., "Nonblocking Commit Protocols", Proc. 1981
	     SIGMOD Conf.

    [ABB+85] Abbadi, A.E., Skeen, D., and Cristian, F., "An Efficient,
	     Fault-Tolerant Protocol for Replicated Data Management",
	     Proc 1985 SIGACT-SIGMOD Conf.

if you have stonebraker's red book (readings in database systems), they're
both in there.
					mike olson
					project sequoia 2000
					uc berkeley
					mao@cs.berkeley.edu