Re: Network databases

On 10 Jan 2005 20:30:29 -0800, "frebe"
<fredrik_bertilsson_at_passagen.se> wrote:

>Did network databases provide better performance than relational
>databases? What are the practical advantages/disadvantages with network
>databases compared to relational databases?
>
>The network concept seem to be very popular in the OO comunity, so it
>would be interesting to know why network databases was abandoned in
>favour of relational databases.
>Fredrik Bertilsson
>http://butler.sourceforge.net

Having lived thru both SAM, ISAM, blablabla, NetworkDB's, HierarchicalDB's and still stumbling along, my experience is:

The then DB-players (like Cullinet, Univac, etc) was caught by surprise when SQL was introduced. They didn't fully understand the SQL concept and was shit scared. They struggled to blend their networkDB with the relational technology, with little and late success. In the meantime new players with enthusiam entered the SQL bandwagon.

Contrary to popular belief today, (some) network DB's provided for a set of different access methods, including indexes. But the main thing was that you programmed for accessing information a-record-at-a-time.

The RDB performance at the time being, IMHO, was worse than network databases.

The SQL language itself was what made the huge difference !

regards Tore Received on Wed Jan 12 2005 - 21:22:38 CET