Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!umix!metavax!oxtrap!hal!ncoast!allbery
From: allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon S. Allbery)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: ORACLE on the cheap... questions
Message-ID: <8208@ncoast.UUCP>
Date: 2 Jul 88 22:51:38 GMT
References: <5165@dasys1.UUCP>
Reply-To: allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon S. Allbery)
Followup-To: comp.databases
Organization: Cleveland Public Access UN*X, Cleveland, Oh
Lines: 37

As quoted from <5165@dasys1.UUCP> by tbetz@dasys1.UUCP (Tom Betz):
+---------------
| Just today received ORACLE's offer of ORACLE-PC for $199, and ORACLE-*NIX
| for $399.00, both including their SQL*Forms, Plus, Report, Calc, and Pro*C
| Pre-Compiler.
| 
| This is a pretty heavy mark-down, and makes me suspicious... but also piques
| my interest.  It's an obvious grab for market share, but I want to inquire:
| does Oracle support such things as transaction logs, roll-back and roll-forward,
| the features that Zim and Progress, among others, offer?  
| 
| Is it strictly an SQL, or does it have some of the richness of functions 
| available with Progress, and to a greater extent, with Zim?
+---------------

The only restriction in the $199/$399 version is in the license:  you can
only use it for development, to use it as a "live" system you have to fork
over the rest of the full price.  --But, judging from how many people pay
for "shareware" programs, I daresay that in practice people use it as if
they had a full license anyway.  (I do *not* advocate doing so, I'm merely
making an observation.)

Oracle has rollback, rollforward, and transaction logs.  The version I used
(5.1) wasn't too hot on the speed front (watch, however, for Turbo Oracle)
and SQL*Forms and SQL*Report are miserable compared to tools designed for
Unix (they both act like what they are:  designed for VMS -- and they are
therefore lacking in flexibility Unix types take for granted, such as
support for multiple terminals/printers).

The SQL supports quite a few more functions than (say) Informix or Unify,
but not as many as Progress.  Nor can new functions be linked into SQL.
(Oracle, if you're listening, this would be a big help!!!  So would (a)
making multiple terminals w/graphics in SQL*Forms work and (b) releasing
that new SQL*ReportWriter for more than just VMS.)
-- 
Brandon S. Allbery, uunet!marque!ncoast!allbery			DELPHI: ALLBERY
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