ANSI & Intergraph RIS

In response to Hugh Grierson's question as to why Intergraph requires ANSI-mode databases for their RIS product. RIS is the solution that Intergraph developed that would allow them to write their CAD application's database interface to be common among all of the supported underlying databases. Intergraph can write its applications using RIS as the database interface without requiring any database vendors specifics to be embedded within the code. This allows a user to pick his database engine of choice, as well as allow for an easy transition to another database engine if they should choose to do so without requiring any application code change. In order to acheive this level of functionality, Intergraph needed to come up with some level of consistency among the various database vendors that would allow this scheme to work. ANSI-mode was the solution. This mode ensures some level of interoperability between the various database vendor's engines through a common set of SQL rules. Hope this helps in providing an understanding as to why RIS is what it is. Fred Seider CAD Analyst Raytheon E&C Phila, Pa. akseider@scdipc0.ueci.com