Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!rutgers!ucla-cs!cit-vax!ll-xn!ames!sdcsvax!ucbvax!hplabs!oracle!bradbury From: bradbury@oracle.UUCP (Robert Bradbury) Newsgroups: comp.databases Subject: Re: Database Machines Message-ID: <318@oracle.UUCP> Date: Wed, 15-Jul-87 22:24:42 EDT Article-I.D.: oracle.318 Posted: Wed Jul 15 22:24:42 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 18-Jul-87 04:24:30 EDT References: <2861@blia.BLI.COM> <2918@zen.berkeley.edu> <2877@blia.BLI.COM> <2943@zen.berkeley.edu> Organization: Oracle Corporation, Belmont, CA Lines: 70 Summary: Distributed dbms - sooner than you think. In article <2943@zen.berkeley.edu>, larry@ingres.Berkeley.EDU (Larry Rowe) writes: > [yet another minor plug (YAMP)] rti currently sells a distributed dbms > that runs on vax's under vms. it probably runs on some of the other > systems too, but i can't keep up with them. oracle announced a distributed > dbms at a big news conference in new york with projected delivery > dates in late 86 early 87. in early 87 they ``withdrew the product.'' > of course the press covered the first announcement but neglected to mention > the second. so, it doesn't seem to matter whether a system actually works > as advertised... sigh! > Oracle version 5.1 does support distributed access to hemogeneous and heterogeneous machines. The big stumbling block which caused the delay was building enough network interfaces to make the product really useful. The database stuff is relatively simple compared to the variety of network interfaces required: VMS: (DECNET,TCP/IP(Excelan,Wollongong),Async); IBM: (3270,DECNET,VTAM,TCP/IP); PC: (3270,DECNET,TCP/IP,Async); UNIX: (Async,TCP/IP). The VMS production release with DECNET support has been around for months. The UNIX production releases of 5.1 with TCP/IP support should be available next month for: 3B2, 3B5, 3B20, Sun, Apollo, Ultrix, Sequent and Xenix. The PC and mainframe products with network support should see the light of day in the Sept-Oct time frame. A simple calculation of the number of machines on which Oracle runs and the number of network interfaces possible on those machines indicates that there are 10's (perhaps 100's) of different machine/network combinations for which code must be written. (Opinion: vendors are going to fritter away man years interfacing to networks unless an IEEE/ANSI committee adopts a standard interface). > > Comments about Ingres to DB2 interface. > > this system is not a product today, but i suspect rti and most relational > system vendors will be deliverying similar products over the next couple > of years. > Oracle's interface to DB2 (SQL*CONNECT) is currently in alpha testing at a major customer site. It should be generally available before the end of the year. > distributed databases and gateways to other data stores (file systems > or data managers) will be very useful tools when they are widely available. > i agree with bill that it will be a couple of years before these configs > are widely available and as reliable as single-site relationa systems are > today. but, if your company/vendor isn't working on them today, you'll > be significantly behind and struggling to catch up. While the interface between a RDBMS and DB2 is fairly straight forward interfaces to IMS and ISAM files are less so. We estimate a good interface to IMS (including 2 phase commit and transaction recovery) to be a 10+ man-year project. An interface to ISAM files is simpler (perhaps 6 man-months) but requires alot of user "interfacing" due to the lack of a data dictionary. It isn't clear that RDBMS and hierarchical/flat-file interfaces will ever be useful for anything other than retrievals due to the matching problems in transaction and locking models. As always none of the above should be construed as a commitment by Oracle. The dates are however from the product managers and should be accurate. -- Robert Bradbury Oracle Corporation (206) 364-1442 hplabs!oracle!bradbury