[dba-Tech] Dearly Departed Databases (R.I.P.)

Thanks for reminding me of these babies, Shamil. I too worked a little in
DataFlex, but never dbVista. I once met and interviewed Robert Carr,
architect of Framework -- perhaps my fave program ever written, though his
choice of language syntax was asinine... but that's neither here nor there.
Robert impressed me as one of the smartest people I have ever met. After
Framework he ventured into areas with promise, I guess, but they didn't pan
out. The handwriting recognition stuff, and so on.

I think I'll try to reconnect with him and see what he's up to.

Access is like a truly gifted bastard child in the MS family. Nobody wants
to admit its progeny. Nobody wants to admit that given any 89 problems, you
can solve them more quickly in Access than in any other MS development tool.
I feel profoundly sorry for the Access development team. They try to please
us -- and for their efforts I am extremely grateful -- but they get shat
upon from above because Access was intended to be a stupid little toy for
the great unwashed and uneducated. So there are these development folks,
writing a powerhouse tool, that the Bosses not only don't want to hear about
but regard as a threat to the more profitable revenue streams.

A handful of the Access team should quit MS and launch an Access-compiler
project. This is very parallel to how Clipper came about. Ashton-Tate
refused to release a compiler, and Brian Russell had the vision to quit the
Framework development team and architect Clipper. Rich McConnell played a
big part but it was Brian's vision that got it from drawing board to
delivered product. Not to say others didn't help, but it was Brian and Rich
that made it happen.

We need some players like that in the Access world. None of us knows enough
about the internals to pull it off. It takes members of the development team
with the guts to quit and the ambitions to release a killer product.

Just think about it. Suppose you could do everything you can in Access, and
then compile the result into a stand-alone product that doesn't require the
run-time or anything else, and compiles to say 2mb per app.

Arthur

-----Original Message-----
From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Shamil
Salakhetdinov
Sent: July 17, 2005 8:48 AM
To: Discussion of Hardware and Software issues
Subject: Re: [dba-Tech] Dearly Departed Databases (R.I.P.)

DataFlex - I did work with it in 1993-1994 - it was great, OOP, 4GL etc. -
it was widely used epecially in Autralia and Sweden, UK etc. - is getting
nowehere now?

dbVista (Raima Data Manager) - great too, C/C++ centric, cross-platform(PC
OSes)  mainly used  in embedded systems now....

Ashton Tate Framework - great tool - anscestor of all nowadays Office
suits...

MS Access :) - it's getting depreciated now as a development tool(?) - not a
mainstream development tool like my collegue working at MS (:) ) says - do
you agree? :)))

Shamil