Record-access libraries (Was: Re: VMS vs. UNIX file soapbox)

[Ozan Yigit]

[disclaimer: I am an ex-VMS-hack, used RMS extensively in the past, like
its power, puke at the sight of its interface, and here, I am speaking of
facilities, rather than a messy filesystem format to support multiple
file formats]

In article <e1Lt8#2CJhqZ=eric at snark.UUCP> Eric S. Raymond writes:
> ...other associative retrieval schemes are not within the scope
>of the original question. Let's not muddy the waters by confusing 'record
>access' in the RMS "fixed and blocked record" sense with more general 
> database access techniques.

They happen to be an integral part of RMS, and extremely well done in
functionality, leaving the "goriness" of the interface aside.
[Reportedly, even the designer of RMS admitted to its ugliness :-)] 
If I had a "library" half as powerful as some of RMS's facilities, I would
be damn happy... It is a shame that best un*x can come with is ndbm (and
that is, if you are lucky :-) Why do you think andrew at alice (Bell Labs)
was asking about something that can handle gigantic databases ??
Aren't you curious why more and more programs across variants of un*xes 
rely on dbm/ndbm type databases ?? It must be RMSicide !!

RMS Record access you say ?? this concept is especially revolting for our
purist(!) byte-stream-with-a-nl (usually 512 bytes or shorter for idiotic
programs :-) perspective.  Alas, we merrily keep faking that our byte
stream is in fact a collection of average size lines (records for less
religious :-) and rush to our soapboxes at the suggestion that something
as ugly as RMS can actually be useful. (*because* of its support of "more
general database access tecniques".)

You know, there is no such thing as "a little bit of purity". On the other
hand, crap is crap.

[Sounds of shuffling a plane ticket to alaska, to escape flames...]

oz
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