All three support transaction logging and recovery, compound keys and time stamping. The most unique feature of the Raima line-up is the combination of pointer and relational data navigation. The installation is a snap. Just unpack the two floppies using tar and run the makeall shell script.
Sets define pointers to other records in the database.
So, one record in a table can point directly to another without joining. Using sets to point to other records is like having a permanent predefined join between tables and can speed up your application compared to the process of iterating over tables to create joins at runtime. In practice, I found that having joins built into the database produced shorter and cleaner code than similar applications using ISAM libraries. Once the .ddl files are built, the ddlp utility compiles a database dictionary and header files that supply constants needed by your application from the database. You can use it either interactively or with canned query files.