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Cool new Free softwareCool new Free softwarePosted Dec 21, 2012 12:51 UTC (Fri) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784)In reply to: Cool new Free software by Wol Parent article: Status.net service to phase out, replaced by pump.io
As I recall from having brushed up against UniData a few years ago, this class of database system works well for limited-depth hierarchical data because of the various things you've mentioned, but that doesn't necessarily mean that all of the advantages apply to other kinds of database structure.
I think it's also pertinent to mention that PostgreSQL has been able to deal with things like multivalued columns for a long time and in an arguably more sane fashion than, say, UniData in various respects, such as in the storage representation which, as I recall with UniData, involved various "top-bit-set" characters as field boundaries that probably made internationalisation a pain.
Certainly, this class of system works well for certain kinds of systems and there's undoubtedly a lot of people still sticking with them, as well as a lot who tried to migrate from them in a bad way, either causing lots of teething troubles and organisational stress with the new system or reinforcing prejudices about the capabilities of "those new-fangled client-server RDBMSs". That the migration exercises probably involved Oracle or some other proprietary solution, where only a single vendor can ease the pain, probably won't have helped.
It's telling that UniData and UniVerse ended up ultimately with IBM after an acquisitions cascade that involved lots of slightly bigger fish eating other fish. I think it was Ardent acquiring the Uni-products, being acquired by Informix, being acquired by IBM. Unlike HP who would have killed the product line in order to add a few cents to the dividend for that quarter, IBM probably see the long-term value in those remaining customers.
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Cool new Free software Posted Dec 21, 2012 13:23 UTC (Fri) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]
I think UniData is a bit of a red-headed stepchild in the Pick world. Certainly the reports I've seen seem to say that under the hood it doesn't do it like the other db's in the family.
Yes, I suspect internationalisation may be a bit of a pain, but it has been done. I haven't used it, but I haven't used internationalisation on linux either (I guess it's there, but I'm not conscious of it).
Limited depth hierarchies? In reality, how often do you blow off the end of Pick's ability? The tools aren't necessarily that good, but it handles between five and seven levels "out of the box". How many entities have attributes nested that deep?
You're right about Ardent acquiring the Uni products, but in reality, Ardent took over Informix. Yes, I know Informix the company bought out Ardent, but six months later the Informix board was gone, replaced entirely by Ardent people. The rumour is that IBM bought Informix for the Informix database, only to discover that the company's primary product by then was U2.
And as you say about Postgres, I don't know anything about it but I understood it could handle multivalue columns sort of thing. If you're going to be strictly relational, however, that's not allowed :-) Postgres is moving away from a pure relational db to a more NFNF model. Pick was there first ... :-)
Cheers,
Informix and IBM Posted Dec 21, 2012 18:21 UTC (Fri) by markhb (guest, #1003) [Link] You're right about Ardent acquiring the Uni products, but in reality, Ardent took over Informix. Yes, I know Informix the company bought out Ardent, but six months later the Informix board was gone, replaced entirely by Ardent people. The rumour is that IBM bought Informix for the Informix database, only to discover that the company's primary product by then was U2.Another rumor I heard, from a consultant who knew a lot of people in IBM, was that when they bought Informix they did, in fact, plan to merge the IDS (or Universal Server) tech into DB2, only to find that the Informix stuff was so far ahead of where DB2 was that they couldn't make it happen.
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