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From: dlw@odi.com (Dan Weinreb)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Extended RDB vs OODB
Message-ID: <1989Aug18.140814.29371@odi.com>
Date: 18 Aug 89 14:08:14 GMT
References: <3560052@wdl1.UUCP> <411@odi.ODI.COM> <458@cimshop.UUCP> <2177@cadillac.CAD.MCC.COM> <20@dgis.daitc.mil> <2230@cadillac.CAD.MCC.COM> <3367@rtech.rtech.com>  <32@dgis.daitc.mil>
Reply-To: dlw@odi.com
Organization: Object Design, Inc.
Lines: 35
In-reply-to: jkrueger@dgis.daitc.mil's message of 17 Aug 89 21:17:53 GMT

In article <32@dgis.daitc.mil> jkrueger@dgis.daitc.mil (Jonathan Krueger) writes:

   dcmartin@lisp.eng.sun.com (David C. Martin) writes:

   >I think that the position of most OODBMS vendors is to provide this
   >type of extended functionality in the DBMS, not necessarily in frontend
   >support systems.

   This is also precisely the goal of those adding OO capabilities to
   relational engines.  However, they start by assuming the engine must
   provide shared access to persistent data.

But of course.  So does any serious OODBMS vendor.  In fact, there is
a commercially-available OODBMS product right now that does pretty
much exactly what Mr.  Martin asked for, and provides shared access to
persistent data (concurrency control, recovery, backup, etc., using
two-phase locking, write-ahead logging, etc).  It's called Statice,
and is a product of Symbolics, Inc.  Its main drawback is that it
currently is only available for Symbolics computers.

Did someone give you the impression that proposed OODBMS systems do
not provide shared access to persistent data?  Of course, as I said
before, the term OODBMS is used for all kinds of things.  However,
speaking for myself and my own use of the term, an OODBMS does not
deserve to be called that unless it provides shared access to
persistent data.

Caveat department: I was a co-founder of Symbolics Inc. and was the
chief designer and developer of Statice.  The work I am doing at
Object Design is also in the OODBMS area, but is substantially
different from Statice in most respects.  (So even within my own
definition of "OODBMS", there is a lot of room for different kinds of
systems!)

Dan Weinreb		Object Design, Inc.		dlw@odi.com