[Info-vax] The real problem that needs solving to grow VMS

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 11/22/2022 10:46 AM, IanD wrote:
> I don't believe you use any relational DB for your application do
> you? (I base this on that I don't recall you mentioning things like
> using RDB in your posts but I could be wrong)

Dave is known to use index-sequential files.

> A relational DB would certainly help with standardized offerings but
> as you said, your application appears to have a lot of specific
> coding / loose model / one off representation needs
> 
> In regards to your application, I would think a Graph DB, something
> like Neo4j, would have no issues modelling the data and relationships
> in the application you work on and would certainly support the
> flexibility required to link various objects and relationships
> together in flexible arrangements. Most of the relationships that you
> probably have buried in code would be defined in the Graph DB
> relationship mapping
> 
> Neo4j / Graph DB's are used by most of the large social media
> companies to model billions of relationships involving multiple
> depths of relationships. They remind me of the old object DB's,
> except more developed and on steroids

I believe graph databases are closed to the old network model databases
(like VAX CODASYL database) than to object oriented databases.

> One use case for Neo4j is that of the US army, that uses Neo4j to
> track a Bill of Materials. Probably something similar in concept to
> what your application tracks in terms of object relationships?
> 
> This is worth a quick read. 
> https://neo4j.com/blog/top-10-use-cases-bill-of-materials/
> 
> Some of the models can be quite involved
> 
> https://nodexlgraphgallery.org/Pages/Graph.aspx?graphID=230312

 > I've been trying to use it to model software testing components for a
 > large software conversion project, as a learning exercise, I can see
 > the potential but I lack the knowledge of Neo4j to quickly knock out
 > solutions, so it's a hard grind of learning in my own time :-(

They have some market share.

It is my impression that they are mostly used for analytical work
and not so much for for transactional/CRUD work. Not to just save
and retrieve data but for trying to get some insight out of the data.

How that fits with Dave's usage I have no idea.

> It runs on Linux, Windows, Mac OS but sadly, not VMS

Neo4J is one of those mixed open source / commercial products.

So the commercial version is not available for VMS and the
open source version has never been tested on VMS, but Neo4J
is written in Java and Scala, so in theory it may run on
VMS.

Anyone with interest and lots of time could try to get
3.x running on VMS Itanium - that has Java 8 (4.x requires
Java 11 and 5.x requires Java 17, so those are not options).

Arne