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From: hughes@jif.berkeley.edu (eric hughes)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.databases
Subject: Re: SQL and Macintosh
Summary: Raima db_Query
Keywords: DBMS SQL
Message-ID: <11753@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 7 Jul 88 14:44:23 GMT
References: <545@utacs.UTA.FI> <3626@bnrmtv.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: hughes@math.berkeley.edu (eric hughes)
Organization: Math Dept., UC Berkeley
Lines: 27

In article <3626@bnrmtv.UUCP> geller@bnrmtv.UUCP (Phil Geller) writes:
>
>Products are coming, but there is a very limited 
>selection at the moment. 
>
>	o RAIMA Corp. (Bellevue, WA. USA) makes a DBMS called 
>	  db_VISTA.  It has a front-end called db_QUERY which
>	  is a SQL interface.  The limitations are that it is
>	  a network, not relational, database model;  the SQL
>	  language is for retrieval only - update, insert, and 
>	  retrieval are not allowed (but are coming in a year (maybe);
>	  and it is a c language interface intended for c developers 
>	  who want to construct their own application and user interface.

I have used db_Query, and it has (to my mind) a lot of limitations.  

First, RAIMA advertises the product as "SQL BASED QUERY".  It is not a subset
of SQL per se, although the syntax is reminiscent of it.  It adds a
statement "relation" which specifies the explicit order in which the buffers
should be filled.  Fields are then "select"ed from that relation.  Unless
the new release changes it, joins are only allowed on set links and indexed
fields. (I upgraded to the new version of db_Vista, but not to db_Query)
To my knowledge, no query optimization is done.

Make of all these scattered thoughts what you will.

Eric Hughes
hughes@math.berkeley.edu