Database Independance

This is a letter forwarded from one of the developers here, and sent to the mailing list with his permission. He doesn't have net access, but I am forwarded the mailing list, and I in turn give it to him. Russ, thought his experiences with the following product would be of interest. ----------------------------begin included letter------------------- Hello Informixers, Please excuse my posting format, but I had a friend forward this letter to the mailing list. I don't have external mail access, and thought you should hear some of my experiences in trying to create a real database independant program. (Please understand, I am not trying to sell anyones products, I am ) (trying to relate a story on my experiences. ) In the past few articles that have been of specific interest to me, there has been talk about a development standard for database applications. i.e. Database Independance Well, we've had a quite a time, until very recently. We were in the process of trying to tie together an Informix and Oracle database (on two different machines) for use in tracking chemical reactions. Why we have two different types is unknown, but one of the reaction programs is Oracle based and one of the primary probe machine uses an Informix engine. We have been using a very kludgy method of grabbing records and loading them across the local network into the proper tables, but had no end of problems. It actually worked, but the system was just waiting to explode. I think one of the biggest worries was incorporation of the system into our mainframe system. Where we are using DB2. (Danger, Danger) Needless to say, we were not looking forward to that next step. WHAT HAPPENED? A friend of mine in Chicago, went to the Database show in December, and talked about all the interoperability demonstrations. One of the booths was giving away full blown copies of their software. He gave me the 1-800 technical support number supplied with the software, and I called. I got a call back, went to the local intergraph office and picked up the CD. It had, what is called the Relational Interface System Development platform on it. (for both SUN and windows NT), in addition it had a copy of Sybase for testing. I thought the set-up was pretty nice, but the installation was not the simplest. Anyway, after loading the development platform, I fired up the online documentation (gui), and built a very simple application. Essentially, what I wanted to accomplish, without investing a lot of time, was a select on the Oracle database, and a select on the Informix database from the same code. Believe it or not, the damn stuff worked great. Sure it has to be an ansi database, but I was able to write an application independant of either database. The informix and oracle code sets where the exact same. Understand, the RIS stuff doesn't pre-process the code, and make it informix compliant, and then make a code set for Oracle. They are both the exact same, and made into one executable. They supplied a standard query language. The set provided is set up with a client, and a server. The server talks to the database, and the client talks to the server. What really finalized our plans was the support for DB2. I talked to the technical support about DB2 and found they have a server, which handles all the DB2 stuff as well. Apparently they support quite a few database, I think it's informix, oracle, sybase, db2, as/400, and ingres, on quite a few platforms (sun, dos, winnt, solaris, ibm, sco and some others) So when we finish this next segement of the project we plan to incorporate the datasets into the DB2 database. Hopefully we will just see the DB2 database slide in, and be transparent. I'll be sure to let the newsgroup know. I was very suspious of the intergraph software, you know those demo copies and all, but they were very up front, and really support the software well. The technical help was exceptional. If you want to contact them, call their 1-800 number it's 800-240-2100 or send email to their mailserver (I haven't tried it) to risdemo@ingr.com If you have any questions for me, just send Nate mail, he said he would forward it to me. Russel Pucket Senior Database Analyst Poly/Mono Bonding ----------------------------------End Russ' Letter----------------------------- If you want, you can send email to me, and I'll forward it to Russ. Nate. ncook@cosmic.uah.edu