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Technology Stocks : IFMX - Investment Discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hardly B. Solipsist who wrote (11667)	8/16/1998 11:57:00 PM
From: Charles Hughes	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14631

>>> there haven't been any really new database ideas since SQL. (Please don't start babbling about OODB stuff <<< Well, that is interesting. If SQL is the standard, few things indeed might measure up. The relational model (SQL being an implementation of that) is the key idea that fueled DB R&D progress and sales for decades. Much as I like OO, true OODB is notably hard to use, so, no. Multimedia DB? Incremental, by these standards. Even datablades. The Web is one giant hypertext database with both relational and free text and other kinds of searching. It certainly qualifies as a new database idea and it sure has been a big hit. Unfortunately, our companies are not directly in that business, at least yet. They don't sell a search engine, for instance, or an internet server, which is exactly the business they should have been in to stay in the leading edge of database engine technology. To give credit where due, Ellison realized that, and Oracle had credible engine and browser products way back. Web servers, Video servers, you name it, were thought up. In the end, couldn't, or didn't, compete. Java boxes, NCs, Java servers. Still involved in Java stuff. Swinging, but no home runs yet. The other DB companies have been content to be 2nd string players in this new giant database web-world. NG. Well, one guy, more or less, invented RDBMS, Codd. With help, shoulders of giants, etc etc. Similarly Timothy Berners-Lee with HTML and the web search stuff. With even more help and input and previous research, but a key brain again involved, willing to push through to completion. Somewhere out there is a man or woman or child with a key insight into how you can connect all this stuff to make it more manageable or even to make it make sense. Connect it to/through/by means of something new, not just with itself, because we now do that fairly well. Chances are, he/she/it is not currently at Informix. It's just the odds that make me say so. news.com has a connection to this idea we are discussing. Cheers, Chaz P.S. Codd and Berners-Lee have changed the world of information, of business, even of entertainment, for that matter of job hunting and personal ads, both in the developed world and many places without, and if they haven't gotten Nobel prizes yet there is a problem with that process.