[Info-vax] Anyone interested in another public access system

[Neil Rieck]

On Mar 20, 2:16 pm, yyyc186 <yyyc... at hughes.net> wrote:
> Several years ago there was a hobbyist version of RDB available from
> oracle.
>
> On Mar 19, 6:26 pm, "Richard Maher" <maher... at hotspamnotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Hi Ed,
>
> > Not wanting to bring undue attention to what you are doing, but how did you
> > get the OK for Rdb/SQL? Have they come out with a Hobbyist license?
>
> > I use the "for purposes of developing a single prototype" clause for mine
> > but last I looked that didn't exetend as far as a public access box. (And I
> > tried hard to get just such a thing for the Deathrow cluster!)
>
> > Cheers Richard Maher
>
> > <totheedgeoft... at msn.com> wrote in message
>
> >news:9b054f2d-8eb4-4f6f-b2c4-6a6adf9af4c8 at j38g2000yqa.googlegroups.com...
>
> > > Hello
> > > With so many free VMS systems popping up, I was wondering if anybody
> > > would be interested
> > > in another one. Its a cluster of a 4000-100A,3100-90,3100-80,4000-500.
> > > This system has
> > > OfficeServer 6.1, WP51, and WPS plus FMS, Forms both RT and Dev,
> > > DECfax, and Document.
> > > Plus the standard compilers and SQL/RDB. Let me know.
> > > tks
> > > ed

It has been more than a year since I downloaded RDB but it installed
and ran without a license. But there were caveats:

1) you need to become an OTN (Oracle Technology Network) member but
membership is free.
2) You must agree to a which states than would only write a single
demonstration application
3) an Oracle salesperson will call you a few weeks later to try to
make a sale.

When I did this, the person that called didn't know the difference
between Oracle Database and Oracle RDB so couldn't provide a proper
quote. A few weeks later I was able to get a verbal quote, which I
took to my boss and he flatly said "no way" (too expensive).

1) The majority of our stuff is written in OpenVMS-BASIC talking to
RMS indexed files.
2) Oracle-RDB still supports native methods of linking to applications
written in DEC languages
3) when my boss said no, we started to experiment with MySQL for
OpenVMS
4) MySQL only has native support for C/C++/Java so we built wrappers
to allow us to indirectly link OpenVMS-BASIC to MySQL (tedious but not
impossible)

Meanwhile, six months later the Oracle salesman called back and
offered us a price which was half of the previous offer. I took this
to my boss who said again said no, but this time it was because all
budgets had been slashed due to an impending corporate take over.

Needless to say our databases are still based upon RMS but I'm sure
we'll get there some day. Oracle-RDB is the Cadillac solution. (if
OpenVMS is ever ported to x86-64 then I'm sure this technology
(OpenVMS-RDB) would attain critical mass)

http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/docs/openvms_notes_rms_rdb.html

Neil Rieck
Kitchener/Waterloo/Cambridge,
Ontario, Canada.
http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/