RE: what is oracle rdb?

I've said it before and I'll say it again...coding for RDB was a dream. Instead of having to rely on a preparser, there was a separate "compiler" that tokenized your SQL code into a object module to be linked with your program(s). Aside from making program maintenance potentially easier, it also allowed language independant so you could code in MACRO, BLISS, Ada, BASIC, C, FORTRAN, or even Mladen's favorite, COBOL.

Rich

Rich Jesse                           System/Database Administrator
rjesse_at_qtiworld.com                  Quad/Tech Inc, Sussex, WI USA

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Monday, November 24, 2003 6:59 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

Monday, November 24, 2003, 3:49:26 PM, ryan_oracle_at_cox.net
(ryan_oracle_at_cox.net) wrote:

rcn> I see it referred to on metalink alot. I know its seperate from the rdbms.

Rdb was the database I cut my teeth on. So easy to use. As I recall, you could create a database with just the following:

CREATE DATABASE; Everything, including the database name, would default. It was great, especially for learning on.

Digital's online help was unsurpassed too. I learned a lot from that, and from their Rdb manual set. All Rdb's commands worked consistently and logically, and everything was so orthogonal. Heck, if you wanted to see what a table looked like, you just issued commands such as:

SHOW TABLE SHOW TABLE /CONSTRAINTS (to see constraints too)

SHOW TABLE /INDEXES /CONSTRAINTS SHOW TABLE /ALL (to see everything)

I recall beginning my database education by tying HELP RDB at the operating system, and then progressing from there. Typing HELP from within RDB's interactive-SQL utility was sheer joy.

One of the first things I did when I made the move to Oracle was to fire up SQL*Plus and issue the SHOW TABLE command to see the structure of a table I was trying to insert into. I was baffled that there was no such command. HELP SHOW didn't help much either, because I discovered that SHOW seemed to show a whole bunch of things I didn't care about and nothing that I did care about. I was even more astounded when I discovered DISPLAY, which didn't, and still doesn't, even begin to give you the information you needed in order to be able to get work done with a table. It took me over a day, as I recall, before I managed to find someone who could show me how to look at constraints on a table. I'd heard all these great and wonderful things about Oracle, that it was *the* database to learn. Well, from a career standpoint that's probably true, Oracle was the database to learn, but certainly not from a usability standpoint.

Best regards,

Jonathan Gennick --- Brighten the corner where you are http://Gennick.com * 906.387.1698 * mailto:jonathan@gennick.com

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