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Conference ulysse::rdb_vms_competition

Title:DEC Rdb against the World
Moderator:HERON::GODFRIND
Created:Fri Jun 12 1987
Last Modified:Thu Feb 23 1995
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:1348
Total number of notes:5438

272.0. "DMS2 on UNISYS" by NZOV07::HOWARD (NZ: Where Digital's Week Begins) Wed Dec 14 1988 01:37

    Can anyone assist me with information on the database product DMS2,
    which runs on UNISYS gear?.
    
    Specifically, is it a relational or CODASYL database?
    
    Any additional info on strengths and weaknesses, when compared to
    Rdb/VMS, would be appreciated.
    
    Cheers, Martin
T.RTitleUserPersonal
Name		DateLines
272.1Burroughs A-Series DMSIISTKAI1::NILSONDaniel Nilson, StockholmWed Dec 14 1988 08:5420
    Firstly, is this a Burroughs A-Series DMSII or 1900-Series ?
    
    For the A-Series, here's some info:
    
    Closer to CODASYL than relational. A Semantic Data Model (SIM) has
    been built on top of DMSII. It supports an object-oriented database
    type, which makes implementation of ad-hoc-applications easy.
    
    DMSII has a high-level language programming interface. You say things
    like "FIND STUDENT WHERE STUD-NO = WS-STUD-NO" in COBOL. All major
    Burroughs languages supported.
    
    Advantages: Stable, bugfree, high performance (used to be hard to
    beat in benchmarks, but makes poor use of todays vast memories),
     fully featured recovery/rebuild, online backup.
    
    Disadvantages: The SIM implementation is a big clumsy on top of
    DMS, tools are old and with incompatible user interfaces, no good
    Data Dictionary, no distributed Db (who has?), no 3rd party
    applications, 4GL LINC (from NZ) can not share Db.
272.2NZOV07::HOWARDNZ: Where Digital's Week BeginsWed Dec 14 1988 12:2616
�   4GL LINC (from NZ) can not share Db.
    
    Really?.  We are in a competitive situation where the opposition
    is supposed to be a combination of LINC software on a DMSII database
    on an unspecified box.
    
    We are familiar with LINC and am seeking information on the database;
    preferably short-comings. Do you mean that there are problems when
    using LINC and DMSII together?.
    
    Why is DMSII not considered relational?.
    
    From your lists of advantages and disadvantages it would seem that
    DMSII is a very good product.  Drat!.
    
   Cheers, Martin
272.3It's LINC not DMSIISTKAI1::NILSONDaniel Nilson, StockholmThu Dec 15 1988 12:4321
    DMSII is not a relational Db. It does not follow any 'standard'.
    
    Regarding LINC and DMSII, my info is a year old, but at that time
    LINC could not coexist on an existing Db. LINC had to generate the
    Db itself and you could not have other programs use the Db. There
    were plans to change that, but I don't know  what happened. LINC
    did not use SIM at all and surely doesn't today either.
    
    If you are in a competetive situation with a LINC system, I don't
    think you should aim at DMSII. To the designer/programmer/user,
    DMSII is totally invisible. It is a good Db system, but it is LINC
    you are facing.
    
    My view of LINC is that it has a nice way of looking at a business
    application and is a pretty complete 4GL tool. Its big disadvantages
    are its lack of communication with other systems and its use of
    nothing else than Burroughs terminals. Performance also used to
    be a weak side. It handled many users pretty poorly. 
                              
    Hope this helps.
    Daniel
272.4From having to dig up the same info ...TRCU09::NAISHRDB4ME Paul Naish @ 637-3352Thu Dec 15 1988 14:589
    I put together a bid for converting a customer from DMSII to RDB.
    Now, that was what the customer asked for. What I wanted to propose
    was to convert them to DBMS since there was a closer match there.
    
    When I was doing my research, I found experienced people in the
    CONVERSION Notes file (KETJE::CONVERSION).
    
    You may also want to call Bob Hanson @KYO (DTN 323-4053). He's
    ex-Burroughs and may be able to help