From: Alan Stebbens <aks%anywhere@hub.ucsb.edu>
Subject: Re: Flatfile db recommendations 
Reply-To: aks%anywhere@hub.ucsb.edu
Organization: The Internet
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 03:54:18 GMT

In article <1992Nov16.185656.9983@kakwa.ucs.ualberta.ca>, sherwood@space.ualberta.ca (Operator) writes:
| |> Has anyone invented a general purpose flatfile database in perl?  My boss 
| |> doesn't need oracle.  He needs something that  will act as rolodex, biblio-
| |> graphy, etc.

| |> I've found a few in C but none quite fit our needs, and my C is not fluent
| |> enough yet to casually adapt other people's semidocumented code.
| 
| A couple of db's you could look at are shql, an sql database system
| built using standard utilities and q, a db implemented in awk in "The
| AWK programming language". As perl has the facilities of both sh and
| awk it should be possible to rebuild both in perl.

My recommendation is either "Jinx", by Peter Henning, or "rdb" (the Perl
version), by Walt Hobbs.  Both are in use at our site for various tasks.

Notably, we use *Jinx* to maintain our host database, with and from which
we automatically create *all* of our DNS nameserver files, as well as a
other ancillary files (/etc/hosts, /usr/lib/mail/smtphosts,
/usr/lib/news/nntp_access, etc.).

Jinx has an interactive "cterm"-based user interface, as well as a
shell-oriented set of command invocations.

RDB is mostly a set of Perl scripts working as filters, like "row" &
"column"; a very nifty table formatting script is in "ptbl", which can
do long field folding into multiple lines per row.

Enjoy.

Alan Stebbens        <aks@hub.ucsb.edu>             (805) 893-3221
     Center for Computational Sciences and Engineering (CCSE)
          University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)
           3111 Engineering I, Santa Barbara, CA 93106


Here are some FTP references for RDB: (archie "RDB")

  total 11
  -r--r--r--  1 ftp   92213 Nov  4 01:18 /anonymous@hub.ucsb.edu:/pub/data/RDB.tar.Z
  -r--r--r--  1 ftp   32990 Oct  8  1991 /anonymous@ucselx.sdsu.edu:/pub/unix/RDB.tar.Z
  -r--r--r--  1 ftp   92213 Jun 28 13:02 /anonymous@dsrbg2.informatik.tu-muenchen.de:/physik/rand.org/RDB.tar.Z
  -r--r--r--  1 ftp   32990 Oct  7  1991 /anonymous@iamsun.unibe.ch:/Databases/RDB.tar.Z
  -r--r--r--  1 ftp    3919 Oct  7  1991 /anonymous@iamsun.unibe.ch:/Databases/RDB.tar.Z.README
  -r--r--r--  1 ftp   32990 Dec 12  1991 /anonymous@minnie.zdv.uni-mainz.de:/pub0/pub/database/RDB.tar.Z
  -r--r--r--  1 ftp   72561 Dec 26  1991 /anonymous@nic.switch.ch:/software/sources/perl/RDB/RDB.tar.Z
  -r--r--r--  1 ftp   92213 Oct 25 18:33 /anonymous@pinus.slu.se:/pub/unix/databases/RDB.tar.Z
  -r--r--r--  1 ftp   92213 Jun 26 05:24 /anonymous@rand.org:/pub/RDB.tar.Z
  -r--r--r--  1 ftp   32990 Oct 24  1991 /anonymous@relay.iunet.it:/local/RDB.tar.Z
  -r--r--r--  1 ftp   92213 Jun 28 13:02 /anonymous@reseq.regent.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de:/physik.archive/rand.org/RDB.tar.Z

And here are the ones for Jinx: (archie -s "jinx") (with some heuristic
filtering :)

  total 29
  -r--r--r--  1 ftp  455729 Jun 19  1991 /anonymous@hub.ucsb.edu:/pub/languages/jinx.tar.Z
  -r--r--r--  1 ftp   56655 Mar 25  1991 /anonymous@plan9.njit.edu:/pub/perl/jinx.ps.Z
  -r--r--r--  1 ftp   67667 Mar 25  1991 /anonymous@plan9.njit.edu:/pub/perl/jinx.shar.Z
  -r--r--r--  1 ftp   67667 Jun 13  1991 /anonymous@qiclab.scn.rain.com:/pub/database/jinx.shar.Z
  -r--r--r--  1 ftp   85771 Dec 15  1990 /anonymous@world.std.com:/src/util/perltools/jinx.ps.Z
  -r--r--r--  1 ftp   63369 Dec 15  1990 /anonymous@world.std.com:/src/util/perltools/jinx.shar.Z
  -r--r--r--  1 ftp   85771 Sep 18  1990 /anonymous@oskgate0.mei.co.jp:/tmp_mnt/public/free/others/jinx.ps.Z
  -r--r--r--  1 ftp   63369 Sep 18  1990 /anonymous@oskgate0.mei.co.jp:/tmp_mnt/public/free/others/jinx.shar.Z
  -r--r--r--  1 ftp   56655 Oct 24 10:22 /anonymous@coombs.anu.edu.au:/pub/perl/scripts/jinx.ps.Z
  -r--r--r--  1 ftp   67667 Oct 24 10:23 /anonymous@coombs.anu.edu.au:/pub/perl/scripts/jinx.shar.Z
  -r--r--r--  1 ftp   56655 Feb 19  1991 /anonymous@sol.cs.ruu.nl:/DOC/jinx.ps.Z
  -r--r--r--  1 ftp   56655 Nov  8  1991 /anonymous@sol.cs.ruu.nl:/PERL/jinx.ps.Z
  -r--r--r--  1 ftp   67667 Nov  8  1991 /anonymous@sol.cs.ruu.nl:/PERL/jinx.shar.Z
  -r--r--r--  1 ftp   56655 Feb 19  1991 /anonymous@sol.cs.ruu.nl:/UNIX/jinx.ps.Z
  -r--r--r--  1 ftp   67667 Jan 24  1991 /anonymous@sol.cs.ruu.nl:/UNIX/jinx.shar.Z



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