Re: If you were inventing CoBOL...
From: Chuck Stevens (charles.stevens_at_unisys.com)
Date: 09/10/04
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Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2004 10:01:08 -0700
"Robert Wagner" <robert@wagner.net.yourmammaharvests> wrote in message
news:2m72k0t8ndm460rk1ttnqk49lrhm3iu1rn@4ax.com...
> Sounds like you're talking about IDMS, formerly owned by Cullinane,
> now by CA. The tipoff should be CA. Everything owned by them is a
> sinking ship being milked for cashflow .. including our beloved Realia
> compiler, now one of the walking fatally wounded.
It may sound like it, but alas, your encyclopedic knowledge has failed you
once more.
The software that started life as Burroughs DMSII back in the very early
1970's, and implemented and supplied on Burroughs Small, Medium and Large
Systems -- almost certainly predated IDMS, and in my opinion, throughout its
life far outstripped it in terms of power, robustness and recoverability. I
have heard that some databases are *starting* to catch up to DMSII in these
areas, but that there are a number of areas in which DMSII leaves everybody
else in the dust. It's now called "Database Server for ClearPath MCP
Systems", by the way.
Cullinane acquired the rights to IDMS in 1973, and it did become their
flagship product. Cullinane was bought by Computer Associates in 1989.
When I first joined Burroughs in 1974 I was peripherally involved in
demonstrations of DMSII/GEMCOS synchronized recovery in which every terminal
on the system was restored to its last-refreshed state, automatically, after
what would ordinarily be a catastrophic failure. One of the big strengths
of DMSII has always been its recoverability and its robustness, and that was
demonstrable before Cullinane even began marketing IDMS.
So far as I have been able to determine, there is not now nor has there ever
been any sort of relationship among Burroughs DMSII, Cullinane, Computer
Associates and IDMS.
>
> > "Normalization" is a religious war.
>
> It's the only source of Truth and Enlightenment. Disbelievers are
> heritics who must be shunned. What do you mean by "religious war"?
> This is about Truth, not religion.
Even in an environment in which there is One True Religion, I believe people
should have the fundamental right to choose whether to adhere to it. In
the case of DMSII, you have the ability to design a "normalized" data base
just as you have the ability to declare a data base with the most horrendous
examples of hierarchical embedding of structures you can imagine (which
were, at one time, viewed as examples of the heighths of elegance,
cleverness and economy in data-base design). I saw examples of both, in the
middle 1970's!
> I've heard the phrase 'fat, dumb and happy'. Are they fat too?
If by "fat" you mean "profitable and successful", yes, I'd say they are. As
to dumb: Yes, they *could* redesign and reorganize, say, a hierarchical
data base so that it met the Latest Stylistic Standards, but it's not clear,
if the database runs just fine the way it is, that there's a *financial*
reason for them to do so.
> >COBOL-style tables exist in databases that allow them, whether the
database
> >definition calls them "an ordered collection of items, all of which have
> >identical attributes, existing in a group item" or "a table".
> Not in any ANSI SQL-compliant database.
Ah. Now we come to the qualification.
You want to build a brand-new ANSI SQL-compliant database on your ClearPath
Plus Libra system? Sure, no problem.
You want to bring your 1975-vintage manufacturing data base with fifteen
levels of parts explosion implemented using hierarchical nesting of
structures up without change in the same system? Sure, no problem.
You want both applications to recover every interactive device to the last
transmission sent to it, without any manual intervention, on any
catastrophe, including a bomb hit on the main data center (so long as you've
set up Remote Database Backup, which is done independent of the applications
accessing the data base)? Sure, no problem.
The infrastructure for *both* databases is that product which began life as
Burroughs Large Systems DMSII.
> Users speak through their wallets. Last time I looked at the tote
> board, the crowd favorites were Oracle, DB2 and SQL Server. IDMS was
> clearly an also-ran. Sorry they didn't like IDMS, but rejection is a
> fact of life.
Well, I'm sorry they didn't like IDMS, too. That must make CA sad indeed.
But I'm not sure what that has to do with the topic at hand!
As to users speaking through their wallets: I would say there exists a
quantity of contented Unisys customers who state, through their wallets,
that the "Database Server for ClearPath MCP Systems" (AKA DMSII) is a MAJOR
reason to choose the MCP environment over any other on the market,
sometimes for the sole purpose of providing support for an enterprise-wide
data base!
-Chuck Stevens
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