[Info-vax] OT: Elephants Can't Dance

[Arne Vajhøj]

Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply wrote:
> In article <49b71bd4$0$90266$14726298 at news.sunsite.dk>,
> =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Arne_Vajh=F8j?= <arne at vajhoej.dk> writes: 
>>>>> What do you mean by "put life back into Rdb"?  The only thing it 
>>>>> possibly lacks is marketing.
>>>> How many new features has been added to RDB the last 10 years
>>>> compared to Oracle Classic, DB2, SQLServer and the rest ?
>>> How many does it need?  Does it do the job people choose it for?
>>> Is the target being capable of doing a job ir keeping up with
>>> the Jones's?
>> The expectations to a database is not constant over time.
>>
>> People want more features all the time.
>>
>> The production I list has added a ton of features the last
>> 10 years.
>>
>> If RDB want to be a general competitor they need new features
>> as well.
>>
>> If the plan is to let RDB support the existing apps that are not
>> being developed much, then RDB does not need the new features. But
>> there is not much of a future in that.
> 
> I don't think it is planned to run Rdb under anything other than VMS.  
> So, only the wishes of the VMS customers are relevant.  Their wishes are 
> routinely incorporated into new releases of Rdb.  The typical Rdb 
> customer on VMS neither wants nor needs bells-and-whistles features 
> which might exist in some other product---he wants something which will 
> do the job.

Surprise: users of other databases also want something that will
do the job. That is hardly a unique characteristics.

But you are correct that if the game plan is to do the best to
keep existing apps running and only see 5-10% disappear every year,
then new features are not needed.

But even though it may take a long time, then the conclusion
is obvious.

Arne