As a database developer who's worked with Oracle (and other RDMS's), I believe I can shed some light on some of the technical issues you raise.
They mention how, early on, the market for RDBMS was given "a huge boost when Oracle standardized on IBM's SQL language" (RFM, p. 199) So there was really no proprietary architecture, after all.
When Oracle standardized on IBM's SQL language, that did not make their architecture non-proprietary -- it simply gave it an open interface. The architecture consists of Oracle's techniques for storing, retrieving, and maintaining data. SQL ("structured query language") is simply a protocol for accessing that database information.
An example of an SQL query would be:
SELECT MsgID, MsgDate, MsgText
FROM Messages
WHERE Author = "Rickus123"
AND SubjectID = 25851
ORDER BY MsgDate DESC
This would retrieve all the messages you've written on this thread in reverse date order. (DISCLAIMER: I have no actual knowledge of SiliconInvestor's data schema, but it probably looks a lot like this. Except that Author is probably stored as a number, not as "Rickus123", similar to SubjectID.)
Most modern RDMS's support SQL as a query language, though there are significant differences in dialect. Only the simplest of queries will work across database platforms. Still, this provides a good degree of "openness" (and attempts at standardization of the SQL language are underway).
Architecturally, however, there are differences in the way data is stored, ranges of values accepted, how referential integrity is enforced, etc. I can tell you that from a database programmer's point-of-view, it is no simple task to move an application from one database platform to another. Very high switching costs.
Hope this helps.
--Tracey |
