Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!bionet!ig!ames!pacbell!osc!rich
From: rich@osc.COM (Richard Fetik)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Extended RDB vs OODB
Message-ID: <458@osc.COM>
Date: 9 Aug 89 02:00:24 GMT
References: <3560052@wdl1.UUCP>
Reply-To: rich@osc.UUCP (Richard Fetik)
Organization: Object Sciences Corp., Menlo Park, CA
Lines: 50

In article <3560052@wdl1.UUCP> mitchell@wdl1.UUCP (Jo Mitchell) writes:
>
>
>  For those of us who are interested in CAD/CAM, CASE applications ...
>
>  After watching the oodb action and "extended" rdb action for awhile I'm
>  of the opinion that all the extended rdb's will eventually turn into an
>  oodb (at least at the conceptual level).
>
>  Because of this it seems most application developers will decide to "convert"
>  via the route with the least slope - by staying with an evolving rdb... 
>
>  Comments?

The problem that relational dbs and their to-be-expected object offspring and
frontends will encounter is a relative (pun) lack of performance.  For the
set of sufficiently complex applications object database performance will be
some orders of magnitude faster than could be achieved with an rdbms.  This
set of applications includes engineering tasks such as CAE, CASE, CAD/CAM,
CIM, etc.  There will always be a set of applications for which relational
databases are the right choice, but they can not be 'grown' into object 
databases without throwing large portions of them out and redesigning from
the ground up.  These large portions may include their storage managers, etc.

If the application really needs an oodb, then use one now - why wait ?
If you're satidfied with the performance you're getting from the commercial
rdb or in-house database you're using, then the evolution strategy that the
relational companies are following is not going to make much difference to
you.  Clearly, the object database market is in the position that the
relational market was in some years ago, and the tools and company
stability/size are yet to be released from the object companies, etc.
The customer that can afford to wait for a year or so may choose to do so,
but for the user community that require the performance and ease of real world 
modelling that can be provided by oo programming and data storage there are
real solutions arriving in your neighborhood shortly.

And yes, I do work for an oodb company, but I chose to do so because I
really believe that this type of product/modelling paradigm will become
the most common eventually, due to the technical advantages.

Whew!!!

Please stick IMHOs in everywhere above;-).  (flame in email please).

Well, you asked for comments...


-- 
					rich@osc.osc.com     415-325-2300
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