HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: carl.pedersen@dartmouth.edu (L. Carl Pedersen)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Informix vs. Oracle
Date: 27 Aug 92 15:49:37 GMT
Article-I.D.: kip-sn-9.carl.pedersen-270892114745
Followup-To: comp.databases,comp.databases.informix
Organization: Dartmouth College

In article <1992Aug27.123031.6373@cbfsb.cb.att.com>, nll@cbnewsb.cb.att.com
(neal.l.leitner) wrote:
> 
[stuff deleted]
> 
> Oracle on the other hand is one of the more confusing RDBMSs that I have
> ever seen.  First of all the installation takes a long time to do.  You
> have to log in as root install the disks, then log in as oracle and do
> another installation.  In order to get into the separate products you 
> need an additional user name and password.  It literally took a week
> to install Oracle on a 386 because the installation disks and their 
> instructions were incorrect.  Oracle's techinical support line, although
> easier to get a technician than Informix were basically clueless on
> how to fix problems.  They kept telling me I had a corrupted /etc/passwd
> file, which was not the case.  So Oracle sits in a box in the corner.
> 
> If I had to choose between the two products, there would not even be
> a hesitation.  Informix!

Sorry, but I just can't let this stand without challenge.  All of the above
may be true on your platform.  I have no experience there, but I've
installed ORACLE more than once on VAX/VMS and have had essentially no
problems.  Ditto for a friend who installed it on a NeXT machine.
From: azn40@ccc.amdahl.com (Ashok Natesan)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Low Maintenance DBMS with SQL interface
Keywords: SQL interface
Date: 28 Aug 92 00:17:19 GMT
Reply-To: azn40@ccc.amdahl.com
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA

We have a lot of C code with embedded SQL (ORACLE) running on our corporate
mainframes.  We are looking into running some of these applications 
on our customer-sites on UNIX workstations. Ideally,  we should be able to write
code to run unchanged on both our corporate and customer environments.

For our customer-site applications,  we require a ** VERY LOW MAINTENANCE DBMS **
since we do not expect to station one of our DBAs at every customer site (sic!). 
Could anyone out there recommend something for this? Actual experience reports would
be invaluable.

If all else fails,  we may be able to settle for some File packages with a SQL
interface (hopefully,  something like ORACLE SQL) instead of a full-fledged DBMS.
Again,  any suggestions would be welcome.

I'll summarize if there is enough of a response.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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			<standard disclaimer>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.databases
From: benb@stortek.com (ben baron)
Subject: REQUEST: PD C source for dBase files
Organization: StorageTek
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 21:26:20 GMT

The header says it all.  Can anyone help with this?  I know there are 
commercial packages which will read dBase files, but is there anything
in public domain?  GNU perhaps?  Replies, please.  Flames > /dev/null.


--
__________________________________________________________________________

"You can make more friends with a kind word and a gun than you can with 
 just a kind word" - Al Capone, The Untouchables

Ben Baron, Ben_Baron@stortek.com                         (303) 673-4670
From: Traveler@mindlink.bc.ca (Chris Krohn)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Need Help Finding Right Database
Date: 4 Sep 92 06:12:35 GMT
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Distribution: world

  I need help finding a database for a specific application.

  I store a great deal of textual information that I retrieve from the network
(stories, humour, etc).  All of this text is beginning to take up a great deal
of room on my hard drive.  It is also getting very difficult to find stuff.

  So what I am looking for is a database application (or language) that
specializes in text storage.  I would also like it to do some compression
(otherwise my database file will take up more room than my text files).

  If anyone knows of any product that does the above, could you please e-mail
me or post a message about it to this group.  The product must be for DOS based
(or windows), and can be shareware or commercial.

        Many Thanx.


--
Chris Krohn                                                     aka: Traveler
still trying to come up with a snappy sig.
Newsgroups: comp.databases,bit.listserv.dbase-l
From: schli@cs.tu-berlin.de (Wolfram Schlickenrieder)
Subject: Clipper: Backup/Restore routines for BIG files...
Organization: Techn. University of Berlin, Germany
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 11:49:59 GMT


	Hi there...

	I'm stuck: I wanted to write a backup & restore routine for an
	application I wrote before, but I have got a few data bases
	which are HUGE (2-4MB) and therefore won't fit on a single
	disc. Has anyone out there done that before from within a
	Clipper application (without using "run backup ..." of
	course)? 

	Any help is appreciated...

	...Wolfram

Newsgroups: comp.databases,comp.databases.theory
From: edwards@world.std.com (Jonathan Edwards)
Subject: How to make a relational queue
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1992 00:13:48 GMT

Well, my previous post turned up no adequate solutions.
In fact, it may not be possible at all. This is such a damning conclusion
(at least to me) that I feel obliged to post my conclusion in the hope
that someone will contradict me.

The problem is implementing a FIFO queue as a relational table. Lets assume
that there is a column containing the datetime of arrival in the queue to
provide the correct ordering. The tricky part is to come up with a way of
removing the oldest row in the queue. Constraints: there are many dequeuers
running asynchronously, and each row must go to only ONE of them.
Further constraint: TRANSACTIONS. Dequeuing is just one operation in a
transaction that might take minutes. The entry must be returned to the queue
automatically if the transaction aborts or the system fails.

The obvious approach is to do a SELECT MIN(datetime) followed by a DELETE.
But what if someone else has already dequeued that row but not yet commited
their transaction? We can't wait for the end of the transaction. So we
could specify that we don't want to wait on this lock and retry the operation.
We could retry by issuing a 
SELECT MIN(datetime) WHERE datetime > locked-item-datetime.
[I don't know SQL from shinola, so pardon my syntax]
We iterate over all uncommited dequeues till we find a winner.

But I think this won't work, at least on RDB/VMS. As I understand it,
RDB puts a read-lock on all rows visited by a transaction, so that our first
SELECT statement would fail with a lock conflict. Thus we have no way of
finding out just what the 'locked-item-datetime' is, because we can't even
look at it.

Am I missing something? Do other databases permit more lenient locking to
allow this? Thanks, Jonathan





Newsgroups: comp.databases
From: dhepner@cup.hp.com (Dan Hepner)
Subject: Re: Hot Standby DBMS's
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1992 00:54:47 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1scd1 PL4

From: chris@yen.imsi.com (Chris Payne)

>   If this advice "credit must always precede debit" is not followed you 
>   might get deadlocks even without replication.  However, this is 
>   insufficient to prevent the other kind of out-of-order deadlocks.

>Here's the idea: serialize & fork the db request stream.  Each hot
>standby database will receive the same transactions in the same order.
>Other receiver(s) can take the same stream and keep it for posterity.
[but ...]

We'll agree that your solution both solved the out-of-order lock problem, 
but left an unusable solution due to performance considerations. 
The problem is that you went way too far.  One need not serialize 
the entire input stream.

>   >If you want to catch-up a server which is down periodically, keep a
>   >copy of the request stream.
>
>   How would you guarantee that transactions will be executed in the same
>   serial order as was implied by the online system?  As has been pointed
>   out, such a guarantee is required to keep the copies synchronized.
>
>Unless you're worried about the non-serial nature of the server
>itself, this is trivial, right?
>/c (chris@imsi.com)

It's not trivial; while the transactions were of course executed in
parallel, there is an "as if serialized" ordering which was achieved.
We cannot know that ordering until after the fact, and even then the only 
way we are likely to be able to figure it out is by examining proprietary
log records. However, if we expect to keep two replicates perfectly 
synchronized, this ordering must be exact on all replicates.  This
generally precludes a solution based on a queued request stream.  

Dan Hepner
From: bkuhn@rhlab.UUCP (bmk Bradley Kuhn)
Newsgroups: comp.databases,comp.databases.informix
Subject: Re: Informix vs. Oracle
Summary: Orcale on DOS?
Date: 28 Aug 92 13:18:23 GMT
Followup-To: comp.databases
Organization: Baltimore Rh Laboratory, Inc., Maryland

In article <carl.pedersen-270892114745@kip-sn-93.dartmouth.edu>, carl.pedersen@dartmouth.edu (L. Carl Pedersen) writes:

> may be true on your platform.  I have no experience there, but I've
> installed ORACLE more than once on VAX/VMS and have had essentially no
> problems.  Ditto for a friend who installed it on a NeXT machine.

Does Oracle run under DOS?  I like informix for the most part, but their
DOS software is not the best.  Also, does Oracle have SQL?


-- 

 -- Bradley M. Kuhn    Computer Systems Development, Inc.
     INTERNET: rhlab!bkuhn@uunet.uu.net OR bkuhn@loyola.edu
     UUCP:     ...uunet!rhlab!bkuhn
Newsgroups: comp.databases
From: gulati@access.digex.com (Raj K. Gulati)
Subject: need help on paradox query
Reply-To: gulati@access.digex.com
Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt MD USA
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 04:18:37 GMT

After some weeks with the manuals of a newly bought copy of Paradox
3.0, as well as the "Paradox 3.5 Handbook" by D.Cobb, I am totally
baffled on how to do the following:

Application: to match candidate skills with job requirements in
             pre-defined fixed categories.

Schema:
         CANDIDATE           JOB#
         CandId#    S*       JobId#  S*
         Skill1     N        Skill1  N     (all skills are numeric
         Skill2     N        Skill2  N      ranges, and possibly)
         Skill3     N        Skill3  N      blank)

Requirement:

         Find all candidate/job pairs such that one of the following
         is true:
             1. skill x are exactly matched on both
             2. a blank job skill x matches with a non-blank
                candidate skill x
             3. a blank candidate skill x matches with a non-blank
                job skill x
             4. if skill x is specifically different and non-zero
                in both, it won't match

Advanced paradox users, please help me. Thanks.

-- 
Raj K. Gulati, Unix Technology, M/S MC07B, G.E. INFORMATION SERVICES, 401 North
 Washington Street, Rockville, MD 20850, USA. [QK: RAJ@GEIS] 1-(301)-340-5204
  CompuServe: 70323,1430  Internet: gulati@access.digex.com, GEnie: R.GULATI
  *** This message is submitted with no intended representation of G.E. ***
Newsgroups: comp.databases,comp.unix.sysv386,comp.unix.misc,comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.programmer,bnr.unix,comp.windows.x.apps
From: mnarayan@bnr.ca (Malur Narayan)
Subject: XBASE Unix database
Reply-To: mnarayan@bnr.ca (Malur Narayan)
Organization: Bell-Northern Research Ltd.
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 15:11:37 GMT

Hello everyone:

I'm new to this group and wasn't sure where to post this request.

I'm currently in quest of an XBase database package (such as RECITAL) or
any other  UNIX based public domin software.

Could someone out there give me any info on such database packages.

Information such as FTP sites or Vendor names would be very useful.

Thanks in advance.


Malur narayan

(mnarayan@bnr.ca)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
"My statements here reflect only MY opinion, not my company's.
From: mer@gaia.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Jeff Meredith)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: POSTGRES v4.0.1 announcement
Date: 27 Aug 1992 11:17:34 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: gaia.cs.berkeley.edu


     Version 4.0.1 of the POSTGRES DBMS is now available for
distribution.  4.0.1 provides many bug fixes over version 4.0.
Version 4 added a lot of new functionality, a lot of new code, and
therefore a lot of new bugs.  Thanks to those of you who spent time
helping us uncover and pinpoint problems.

Among the key changes in 4.0.1 are:

 o  More multi-user fixes.  We now believe POSTGRES to be a much more
    reliable multi-user system.

 o  Disk page and shared memory page doctor programs.

 o  4.0 databases will copy straight across without doing the POSTGRES
    copy to / copy from conversion dance.

 o  Performance tuning.  Some of the fat has been trimmed off of 4.0.

Also, as of 4.0.1 we will be making a POSTGRES 'developers distribution'
available.  This package will consist of the standard distribution plus
the entire RCS history of the code along with some system validation tests.
It can be found in ~ftp/pub/postgres-developer.tar.Z.

Postgres runs on Sparc I, Sparc II, Sun 4 running SunOs, and DECstations
running ULTRIX >= 4.0.  Postgres consists of about 250,000 lines of C.

If you would like to get Postgres 4.0.1, you can do so in one of two ways:

(1)  Anonymous FTP from postgres.berkeley.edu

To FTP postgres to your site, type the following bracketed text without
brackets.  You should see similar output.

% ftp 128.32.149.1 

- or -

% ftp postgres.berkeley.edu
Connected to 128.32.149.1.
220 postgres FTP server (Version 4.4 Sun Feb 5 07:58:07 PST 1989) ready.
Name (128.32.149.1:): [ anonymous ]
331 Guest login ok, send ident as password.
Password:[ mylogin@myhost ]
230 Guest login ok, access restrictions apply.
ftp> [ cd pub ]
250 CWD command successful.
ftp> [ get postgres-setup.me ]
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for postgres-setup.me (N bytes).
ftp> [ binary ]
200 Type set to I.
ftp> [ get postgres-v4r0r1.tar.Z ]
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for postgres-v4r0r1.tar.Z (N bytes).
226 Transfer complete.
local: postgres-v4r0.tar.Z remote: postgres-v4r0.tar.Z
N bytes received in MMM.MM seconds (KK Kbytes/s)
ftp> [ quit ]
221 Goodbye.
%

Or, if you do not have net.access, you can order a Postgres distribution
tape by sending a check payable to

the Regents of the University of California

for $150.00 to:

         Postgres Project
         557 Evans Hall
         University of California
         Berkeley, CA 94720.

     Indicate in your accompanying letter whether  you  want
     the  system on a 9-track tape at 1600 BPI, at 6250 BPI,
     on a cartridge tape for SUN shoeboxes (QIC 24  format),
     or on a TK50 DEC cartridge tape.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Meredith
Postgres Chief Programmer
mer@postgres.berkeley.edu
Newsgroups: comp.databases
From: sethg@dcatlas.dot.gov (Seth Grimes)
Subject: BLOB handling by commercial DBMSes
Organization: U.S Dept. of Transportation
Distribution: comp
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1992 16:00:20 GMT

The recent Informix/Oracle debate included an offhand comment on 
Informix's handling of BLOBs.  How developed is this capability?
What size BLOBs and is the handling integrated into the DB server
kernel?  What about competing commercial RDBMSes like Oracle,
Sybase, Ingres and others?

Seth Grimes, dcatlas!sethg@uunet.uu.net
Automated Sciences Group (U.S. Dept. of Transportation)

Newsgroups: comp.databases
From: paulg@resmel.bhp.com.au (Paul Gallagher)
Subject: 4th dimension export to text performance??!?
Organization: BHP Research - Melbourne Laboratories, AUSTRALIA
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 09:11:02 GMT

Hello 4th Dimension Users,

I'm not a big user of 4D and I was hoping that someone out there
has the requisite experience to tell me if I'm unusually experiencing poor
performance with a job I'm currently running.

I'm exporting a database comprising about 10 related tables to text.
there's a total of 180 fields, the large majority of which are ASCII.
There are aroung 71000 records. The database is about 120Mb, and the disk
has around 200Mb free to accept the output file.

4th Dimension is given 5Mb memory, and 
is running under System 7.0.1 on a Mac IIx.

So far the job has been running for 3 1/2 days, and is just approaching
50% completion! Is this wierd, or am I just a speed fiend? What I've
noticed is that the application is most definitely NOT disk bound (you
have to wait patiently to see any activity at all). Obviously it is
doing alot of in-memory manipulation to construct the line of text
for each record (which is going to be *way* big). And btw, yes it *is*
still running (not crashed) :-)

Is there anything I can do to optimise 4th Dimension for this type of
work, or is this just the way things were meant to be?

regards,
Paul Gallagher

     /\/\       Paul Gallagher, PC Support Officer,
    / / /\      Computer Systems Group,
   / / /  \     BHP Research - Melbourne Laboratories
  / / / /\ \    245 Wellington Rd Mulgrave Vic 3170 AUSTRALIA
  \ \/ / / /    Phone : +61-3-560-7066,  Fax : +61-3-561-6709
   \  / / /     ACSnet  :  paulg@resmel.bhp.com.au
    \/\/\/      
Newsgroups: comp.databases,comp.databases.informix
From: denisl@col.hp.com (Denis Lambert)
Subject: Re: Informix vs. Oracle
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 14:14:08 GMT
Organization: HP Colorado Springs Division

There is an interview with Informix COE Phillip White in the August
DBMS magazine.  White talks about their direction and some new products
such as 4GL++, an object oriented environment for Windows, Motif, NextStep,
etc..

Denis Lambert
denisl@hp.col.com
From: jeffl@houdini.sybase.com (Jeff Lichtman)
Newsgroups: comp.databases.theory
Subject: Re: What is the _Halloween Problem_ ?
Date: 26 Aug 92 20:01:00 GMT
Organization: Committee to Increase The Entropy

In article <1992Aug24.000720.7563@news2.cis.umn.edu>, kencham@ulysses.cs.umn.edu (Deepak) writes:
> What is the _Halloween Problem_ ?

The Halloween Problem is that, when applying updates to a table, the results
of the updates might depend on the order that they are applied.  For example,
suppose you have the following table:

	employees (id, salary, manager_id)

and you want to give a 10% raise to everyone who earns less than his or her
manager.  In SQL, you would write the query like this:

	update employees
	set salary = salary * 1.10
	where salary <
		(select salary
		 from employees e
		 where e.id = employees.manager_id)

(This is how you might write it in Sybase's version of SQL, anyway.)

Now suppose the data looked like this:

	id	salary		manager_id

	1	1000.00		NULL
	2	 950.00		1
	3	 950.00		1
	4	 960.00		2
	5	 960.00		3

Let's say the database engine updated the rows one at a time, as it saw
them.  If it started from the first row and worked its way down, it would
get the following result:

	id	salary		manager_id

	1	1000.00		NULL
	2	1045.00		1
	3	1045.00		1
	4	1056.00		2
	5	1056.00		3

But, if it started at the last row and worked its way up, it would get the
following result:

	id	salary		manager_id

	1	1000.00		NULL
	2	1045.00		1
	3	1045.00		1
	4	 960.00		2
	5	 960.00		3

In the latter case, employees 4 and 5 don't get the raise because they are
earning more than their managers at the time when the database engine looks
at their rows.

Relational theory mandates that the updates be determined by the state of
the data when the update started.  That is, an update is not allowed to make
any decisions or calculations based on its own partial results.

Most relational database systems solve this problem by logging all the changes
that the update will produce before they make any of the changes.  Only
after all the changes are logged will they be applied.  This effectively
makes the results of an update depend on the state of the data at the time
the update started.

By the way, I have it on good authority, that it's called the "Halloween
Problem" because it was first thought of on Halloween.
---
Jeff Lichtman at Sybase
{mtxinu,pacbell}!sybase!jeffl  -or- jeffl@sybase.com
"Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent..."
Newsgroups: comp.databases.theory
Subject: Re: Database Textbook
From: jdavis@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz (Joseph G Davis)
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1992 03:11:32 GMT
Organization: University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Possibly the worst book and the one to surely avoid is "Database Management"
by McFadden and Hoffer and published by Benjamin Cummins.  It is  full
of misprints and repetitions and poorly organised; very tedious to use,

-Joseph Davis
From: curtis@optima.UUCP (Curtis E. Dyreson)
Newsgroups: comp.databases.theory
Subject: Re: The problem of missing information (ftp bib info)
Date: 28 Aug 92 19:34:22 GMT

From article <1992Aug28.115738.19259@nntp.nta.no>, by olea@hal.nta.no (Ole J. Anfindsen FDA):
> 
> I am currently doing some work related to the Problem of Missing Information.
> Below are the references I have gathered so far.  If anyone is able to 
> supply further references, it will be highly appreciated.  Thanks in advance!
> 

A bibliography of incomplete information in database systems is available
via anonymous ftp at cs.arizona.edu.  The bibliography currently has
231 entries.  The relevant ftp files are:

      bib/incomplete.tex      (latex version of bibliography)
      bib/incomplete.ps       (postscript version)
      bib/incomplete.bib      (bib format, with abstracts)

Bibliographies on temporal databases (bib/time.bib) and just
databases (bib/database.bib) are also available.  If you have additions, 
comments, or corrections, please feel free to contact me.

   curtis@cs.arizona.edu

   Curtis Dyreson 
   Dept. of Computer Science, The University of Arizona,
   Tucson, AZ 85721
   United States of America
From: lka@flopsy.cs.bham.ac.uk (Leonard Aye)
Newsgroups: comp.databases.theory
Subject: WANTED:Info on Distributed DBs and Logic Programming
Date: 28 Aug 92 15:12:48 GMT
Reply-To: L.Aye@cs.bham.ac.uk
Organization: Birmingham University Computer Science, England, UK

Dear Netters


I'm doing research into distributed databases and would like
any info. and literature on the use (or application) of logic
programming to distributed databases, either in representation
of databasess or in query evaluation.


Thanks for your help.


Len Aye

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Leonard Kyaw Soe Aung Aye			|E-mail: L.Aye@cs.bham.ac.uk
School of Computer Science, 			|tel: 	+44 021 414-3736
The University of Birmingham,Edgbaston,		|fax:	+44 021 414-4281
Newsgroups: comp.databases.theory