[Info-ingres] What is like the Ingres that I remember?

[Roy Hann]

metalworker.mike at gmail.com wrote:

> Back in the later 80's I worked in computers.  This was back in the
> halcyon days when kids were hired right out of high school to do
> major programming.  I got out of programming, but I remember a large
> system that I wrote using, believe it or don't, PC-Ingres.  Part of
> the system was run on Vaxen and it was primarily based on PCs (PC-ATs,
> if I remember correctly) and it was quite complex.  Dozens and dozens
> of hand-coded screens (not just QBF stuff) and many many reports and
> manual processes run from batch files.  Anyway, although I haven't
> worked in computers for over 25 years, I got it into my head recently
> that I'd like to write a CMMS for my actual real job.  I'm curious if
> anyone knows of a system available today (hopefully free!) which is
> similar to what I remember.  A screen editor, a report editor.. maybe
> they're all like that.  I wouldn't know - I haven't touched an RDB
> since that job almost 30 years ago.
> 
> Any thoughts?

Well there's always Ingres. All the stuff you remember from PC-Ingres is
still in the product set and works the way you remember. (Well, apart
from no longer having to SET MEMORY every five minutes to force garbage
collection!)  ABF, QBF, Report Writer--it's all there.

The big difference is that you can have it for free now if you download
the community version from
http://esd.actian.com/product/Community_Projects/Ingres_Database.

You don't mention whether you prefer QUEL or SQL; QUEL is virtually
unchanged since the late '80s, Ingres SQL has kept pace pretty well with
most widely used SQL dialects.

Roy (Ingres user since May 1984)