Very cool! More of that community spirit stuff that I find so admirable.
If you keep the entire DB in RAM, then do you have to save the entire DB when you do a save, or can you save just one record? -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Rob Cozens Sent: Monday, October 24, 2005 11:36 AM To: How to use Revolution Subject: RE: database Hi Joanthan, >What motivates you to create such a beast for free? Surely it took an >enormous amount of work for you? SDB was originally created in HyperTalk about 15 years ago. I was working with a San Francisco winery supplier and Fresno State College professor of vitaculture on the forerunner of OenoLog. We had purchased Answer Software's HyBase engine, a 4th generation db designed to back-end HyperCard, when Serge Grenier posted "Networking HyperCard Stacks" to the HyperCard Mailing List. Seeing how simple it was (conceptually, if not in implementation) and desirous of (a) being able to modify and augment the db engine supporting our application and (b) freeing our project from royalty obligations, we abandoned HyBase and I scripted SDB's original version. My reasons for making SDB open source and royalty-free are: * I'm in the business applications software business, not the database/RAD tool business. * It is my hope that others will use it and broaden the range of real-world testing and evaluation of SDB; thus strengthening my applications that rely upon it * As with Serendipity Library in general, which was available to the HyperCard community B.R. (Before Revolution), SDB is my humble contribution to the xTalk community which has given much to me over the years. I believe there is a real need for a db engine that integrates totally with Transcript and is free of non-essential baggage such as data typing & data dictionaries. I believe that, like the original HyperCard, allowing people to use and poke around inside SDB at no risk (ie; cost) is a better way of gaining acceptance within the community than mounting a sales effort for a for-cost product. >How does serendipity compare on speed to database programs written in >C++? I have done no head-to-head comparisons. I will note that although SDB's design looks to maxiize processor efficiency, speed has never been the overriding goal. Most db's I work with contain less than 20,000 records, and the speed I'm seeing (eg: retrieve one record out of 40,000 by key value in < 1 second on a G4 iMac wirh medium clock & RAM) is adequate. If the C++ db engine is accessing a disk-based db, SDB has the advantage (and attendent RAM requirements on the server) of maintaining the entire db in RAM. Finally, the index searching is currently basic binary, and could be redesigned to incorporate industrial-strength B-Tree indexing if the present performance isn't adequate. Rob Cozens "I must be the change I want to see in the world." -- Gandhi _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [email protected] Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [email protected] Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
