[dba-Tech] database

Hi Jim --

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Too bad I never had a chance to try it out.
>>>
AFAIU you mean DataFlex? (I suppose it wasn't a bad luck you haven't had a chance to work with it.)
I have worked with DataFlex MS DOS within year 1993.
By that time DataFlex have had already used so called 4GL Object Oriented proprietary programming language.
That was a kind of "Object Cobol" - resulting in a very verbose code.
Yes, it was a powerful OOP 4GL and development system, maybe too powerful to be true for that time: when I switched to MS Access 1.1 because of my that time main customer request - that was a shock as MS Access 1.1 was "object based" and it (MS Access) doesn't have any features to create custom classes etc.
DataFlex, I suppose, was too late with its Visual DataFlex version - and MS Access "crushed" it and PowerBuilder, and Borland's Paradox and dBase, and Clipper, and FoxBase... on MS Windows desktop platform.

DataFlex has a notion of Dataset - a set of related tables - datamodel subset. That Dataset can be "bound" to UI and it is providing a very powerful data manipulation operations - that was a unique(?) feature for middle 90-ies of the last century and it's still rather unique I suppose.

DataFlex wasn't an MS SQL based DBMS - one would better think of it as having Network Data Model ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_model ).

Thank you.

-- Shamil


Воскресенье, 27 января 2013, 11:51 -08:00 от "Jim Lawrence" <accessd at shaw.ca>:
>Hi Stuart:
>
>That is impressive. Too bad I never had a chance to try it out.
>
>Those were the "Gold Rush" days of computers. The database and systems
>market was growing like crazy then. Anyone smart and willing to work hard
>could turn a really good buck...obviously you did.
>
>CPM, huh...first DOS, but was multi-user capabilities. If Microsoft had not
>been so struck on being different all their slashes could have been the
>right way, their system would have been multi-user and network ready. Worked
>with CPM, on government managers' Kypros (the precursor of the laptop...it
>was as heavy and big as a PC but came with a suit-case handle so it was
>portable). If you know CPM well, then UNIX and now Linux would seem like
>home. 
>
>One of my contracts was working on an ancient accounting system for the
>government from 1992 to 2000. The database was called DC/2. (Interesting
>aside: the database was originally commissioned and then sold by a mortuary
>company out of Chicago...a good location for that type business...very high
>volumes.) Its language was like a macro assembler code; OP code, Operand and
>value. Returns and loops were just offsets pushed into the local stack,
>followed but a return OP code. No real-time keys or indexes, those tasks
>were over-night batch files. The system had thousands of users and was the
>back-bone of two of the largest government ministries. We were on call 24x7.
>The system was originally on an IBM Mainframe, using a version of CPM, then
>it was migrated to a VAX, using VMS (the first modern virtual UNIX), then it
>migrated to DataPoint on UNIX servers and finally to Linux servers. I
>understand that it has now been abandoned (R.I.P) and replaced by an Oracle
>DB with their PL/SQL language and their GUI FE but of course it is running
>on Linux. 
>
>Things sure move fast in the computer world. 
>
>Jim

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