[Info-vax] Layered products, the HP view !?!

[Jan-Erik Soderholm]

Norm Raphael skrev den 2015-06-19 00:17:
>
>
>   > On 06/18/15, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)<helbig at asclothestro.multivax.de> wrote:
>   >
>> In article <mluu36$1c8$1 at dont-email.me>, Stephen Hoffman
>> <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> writes:
>>
>>> This'd be a much easier problem with an integrated database available
>>> within OpenVMS; for PCSI, LMF, SYSUAF, etc.
>>>
>>> Obviously: getting from the current home-grown database scheme over to
>>> a relational database package won't be trivial, and undoubtedly won't
>>> meet the release deadlines here.
>>
>> Since it works very well with VMS and is a very good product, Rdb would
>> be the natural choice, but of course most customers wouldn't want to
>> spend the cost of an Rdb license just to let the OS do stuff with it.
>>
> That license was bundled with VMS on my VAX-4000 and DEC/EDI used it.
>
> Norman F. Raphael
> "Everything worthwhile eventually
> degenerates into real work." -Murphy
>

That was the Rdb RTO (RunTime Only) license. That one was also included
in some of the bundled (NASnnn) LP license options. I think the RTO
licens went away at the time that Oracle bought Rdb.

We used it also with DEC/EDI on an MV3100/90 (nice 24 VUP VAX system!).

We built a "development" frontend using VisualBasic on Windows so
that we could create databases. Note that the RTO option internaly
supported the same commands to create databases, it just hadn't
any VMS CLI (SQL or DBO) to do that. But the same SQL's could
be sent through SQL/Services...

Now, do I think that it would be a good idea to have something as
complex as Rdb (or similar relational database package) to handle
such low level things as "PCSI, LMF, SYSUAF, etc."?

No, probably not. It would give some nice features when everything
was up and running like querying the UAF "database". But on the
other hand it could also create additional problems when your
system doesn't boot and maybe you do not get the database up.

IMHO, it would have to be somehing like the embedded databases
like those that Android uses internally. A database like Rdb is
best left for the heavy load with the applications.