[Info-vax] Oracle on VMS

[IanD]

Embedded or Modular ?

Modular separates the SQL component from the language, technically meaning you can change languages and not touch the DB side (yeah right!!!)

Modular came after embedded and was supposed to be the natural evolution on from embedded but there is so much embedded RDB code around that I think people who maintained RDB just stuck with embedded versus learning another paradigm and/or converting

I think there were some differences around error returns with modular being more comprehensive? but I'm trying to remember from 10 years ago and I really only did fairly simplistic stuff with it

Yes, modern DB's do cache execution plans, RDB I believe was the first to come up with the idea of a query optimizer and unlike MySQL (or how it used to be) with RDB you can access the query optimiser for free and it's cincluded in the price and even make changes to it to force your own behavior if you believe the DB got it wrong on it's strategy (usually happens when it gets the number of tuples wrong on complex joins etc)

I wonder with the push for dynamic languages how much optimisation is worth it at compile time versus having a smarter optimiser at run time? I guess some information could be supplied to the DB in advance because RDB creates a strategy at run time and formulates it's strategy then - being forewarned wth inside knowledge from an EXE might help?

This sort of stuff is way beyond my knowledge base. I used to have enough fun and games just tuning RDB and playing with optimiser strategies yet along designing an optimising engine beast !