[Info-vax] wrong file format

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2021-01-07 15:54:02 +0000, Arne Vajhj said:

> On 1/6/2021 10:39 PM, Dave Froble wrote:
>> On 1/6/2021 7:02 PM, 1tim.... at gmail.com wrote:
>>> A set of records is what most businesses are dealing with, like item 
>>> lookups based on attributes, getting order history, processing lines on 
>>> an order, etc.
>>> 
>>> then as a next go round, maybe simple joins on keys...but that begins 
>>> to increase complexity, where maybe a native RDB or OODB starts making 
>>> sense.
>> 
>> What you're suggesting is pretty much what decent RDBMS products 
>> provide, along with many other advantages.
>> 
>> Rdb should have been made a part of the normal VMS distribution.  It 
>> would have made VMS much more desirable, and locked more people into 
>> it's advantages.
> 
> Interesting idea.

That inclusion sorta-kinda happened; the Rdb run-time was (briefly) 
integrated with the OpenVMS licensing. With the sale to Oracle, that 
ended—somewhere around 1995. From very murky memory, there was a 
discussion of the removal of Rdb in the OpenVMS release notes, not that 
I can readily find OpenVMS release notes from a quarter-century ago 
using DDG/Google/GoogleNews, and I'm not inclined to mount and rummage 
the ODLs for old release notes.

>From an old SPD: "DEC Rdb for OpenVMS VAX Run-Time Option is included 
as part of the QL-001A*-** license for the OpenVMS VAX operating system 
and as part of the NAS 250, NAS 300, and NAS 400 integrated product 
sets for OpenVMS VAX. It is not included with the QL-005A*-** license 
for the OpenVMS VAX operating system."

For those that didn't have that OpenVMS license, Rdb RT was also part 
of the NAS NET-APP-SUPP license package, somewhere around 250 level 
IIRC. It wasn't in the lower-tier NAS licenses.

May well be wrong, but I thought the run-time itself was briefly in 
OpenVMS, though I may well be mis-remembering the license inclusion. 
Long time ago, all that.

But the availability of Rdb for integration into OpenVMS is—for the 
purposes of this discussion and for the next decade, and absent Oracle 
deciding to sell some or all of Rdb to VSI—somewhere between unlikely 
and not happening.

I've pointed at SQLite as an alternative database before. PostgreSQL 
might become another option, if the SSIO-related corruptions can be 
resolved.

And various other platforms include frameworks and tools that access 
and use the integrated databases. macOS makes use of SQLite, and offers 
frameworks including CoreData that use SQLite, for instance.

>> In my own personal opinion, and I'm biased, the greatest flaw of RMS 
>> was not including record and field definitions associated with ISAM and 
>> Relative files.
> 
> If I remember correctly, then the "vision" back then was to store such 
> info in CDD as part of VAX Information Architecture.

Correct; CDD/Repository was to hold that data.

DATATRIEVE still supports CDD/Repository as do various other tools, and 
DATATRIEVE added text-based record storage data.

OpenVMS itself uses SDL for data definition storage.

OpenVMS has little (no?) CDD/Repository usage within OpenVMS itself, 
and little outside of related LP-related product testing.


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