ISAM & terminal interaction sources available: summary (long)

Jukka Reinikainen reini at tolsun.oulu.fi
Sun Sep 18 20:22:36 AEST 1988


A month or two ago I posted an article asking information about PD or
commercial ISAM and end user terminal interface sources available.

I promised to write a summary and this summary is about e-mail I have
received.  This summary is quite long but I belive it's worth posting.
Summary contains parts of e-mail I received, some parts of the original
articles have been discarded.  I hope no one of the authors get mad
because I publish their names here.  If you do, blame on me 
(Jukka Reinikainen: reini at tolsun.oulu.fi).

I want to thank all of you who have helped me.

**********************
**** ISAM-sources ****
**********************

/*------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
    {uunet,mcvax}!enea!kullmar!bk (Bo Kullmar):

    Michael Widenius has written a ISAM database in C. It is currently 
    running on XENIX 386, HP 9000 and a swedish System V clone 
    (DIAB Data DS90).

    Contact: T-D-X SoftWare AB 
             Michael Widenius
             Gamla Skomakarbolevagen 1EII
             00740  HELSINFORS FINLAND
/*------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
   friedl at vsi.com (Steve Friedl):

   ===== D-ISAM =====

    An inexpensive commercial implementation of C-ISAM 2.0 (100%
    source and data file compatible).  $595 for full source plus a
    manual, no royalties until the application exceeds 100 copies, 30
    day return full refund guarantee.

    We used the very first version out the door and found it buggy,
    but this was six months ago and they're likely to have gotten it
    down by now.  In addition, the company is nice to work with
    (programmer = Bruce Fast).

	Byte Designs Ltd.		or
	Box F195-76			6-3511 Viking Way
	Blaine, WA  98230  USA		Richmond, BC  V6V 1W1  Canada
	+1 604 278 5200


    ===== C-Tree ====

    Probably the best record mananger around, and it's been ported to
    everything including your analog wristwatch.  Full source, no
    royalties for around $400 with good docs and excellent technical
    support.

    We have this but haven't used it enough to have an independent
    opinion on the operational characteristics, but the code is
    excellent.  They have additional products that build on top of
    C-Tree (reports library, application generators, etc).  They have
    been around a long time, and I've never heard anything bad about
    C-Tree; really professional stuff.

	FairCom
	2606 Johnson Drive
	Columbia, MO  65203 USA
	+1 314 445 6833 voice
/*------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
    C-TREE was also mentioned by clindh at stride.Stride.COM (Christer Lindh).
    He pointed out few things about C-TREE:

        - it works well
        - the code is sprinkled with comments
        - it has lots of defines so you can tune it to your
          UNIX/C-compiler
        - it doesn't support "transactions"
/*------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
    David Beckemeyer (david at bdt.uucp):

    I use a package from a company in Canada called Softfocus.  The product
    is a ISAM/Btree system.   It was originally written for PC-DOS and most
    of their customers are DOS; UNIX is a smnall percentage of their 
    business.  I have had mixed experiences with both the company and the 
    software, although I have gotten it to work pretty well under many 
    operating systems including: 4.3BSD, SysV, SysIII, Xenix, PC-DOS, and 
    our own propietary multi-user OS called Micro RTX for the 68000 CPU.

    The Softfocus ISAM has many of the features you mention, but it lacks
    a few:

	1) It does *not* include any tools or utilities for reconstructing
           damaged index files; I had to write my own.  

	2) It isn't very fast or efficient when the multi-user mode is used.
           In multi-user mode, all caching is disabled, and data is sync'd 
           all the time.  Also the lock/unlock glue that you provide to 
           their code better be *very* efficient becuase the Softfocus code
           is not very smart about low-level lock/unlock and ends up calling
           lock/unlock hundreds of times in a typical operation.  It has no
           instrinsic "undo" mechanism; these must be built into the 
           application.

    Softfoucs' address is:

	Softfocus
	1343 Stanbury Dr.
	Oakville, Ontario L6L 2J5
	(416) 825-0903

    I believe the price is about $200 for the multi-user version.  That buys
    you full binary distribution rights for as many copies on as many machines
    as you want.
/*------------------------------------------------------------------------*/

********************************************************************
**** ISAM and end user interface related litterature references ****
********************************************************************

/*------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
    russell at civil.civeng.oz.au (Russell East):

    Have you looked at a book titled
    "C DEVELOPMENT TOOLS FOR THE IBM PC"
    by Al Stevens, copyright 1986, and published
    by Prentice Hall Press, New York,
    ISBN 0-89303-612-9

    This probably has everything you need.
/*------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
    friedl at vsi.com (Steve Friedl):

    If you don't mind doing some development, I now remember some
    industry texts that contains some of the information you want.

    _The C Toolbox_ contains, among other things, a B-Tree indexed
    record manager (full source, of course) will lots of explanations
    on what is doing what.  It's specific to the IBM-PC but I would
    think that the file manager parts would be a little more
    independent.  The source to everything in the book is available
    on disk for US$30 as well.

	_The C Toolbox_
	(Serious C Programming for the IBM PC)
	by William James Hunt
	Addison-Wesley Publishing Company
	ISBN 0-201-1111-X

    I've another book called _Advanced C Programming for Displays,
    with subtitle of "Character Displays, Windows, and Keyboards for
    the UNIX and MS-DOS Operating System".  It is perhaps a little
    too low-level for you -- somebody writing a curses-replacement
    would want this -- but it seems to be along the right lines.
    It's written by Marc Rochkind, an excellent writer whose books
    I always buy.

	_Advanced C Programming for Displays_
	by Marc Rochkind
	Prentice-Hall
	ISBN 0-13-010240-7
/*------------------------------------------------------------------------*/

*************************************
**** End user terminal interface ****
*************************************

/*------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
    friedl at vsi.com (Steve Friedl):

    For this part of the application you might want to consider
    Windows for C and Windows for Data from VCS.  These are libraries
    that give pretty powerful access to the screen.  You get
    attributes, fkeys, pop-up scrolling windows with lookups, field
    entry, etc.  It's been ported to DOS, UNIX, Xenix, and VMS, plus
    source is available.   We use it and like it.

	Vermont Creative Software
	21 Elm Avenue
	Richford, VT 05476 USA
	+1 802 848 7731 voice
	+1 802 848 3502 FAX
/*------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
    David Beckemeyer (david at bdt.uucp) has developed a menu/forms system
    for his own use and it seems quite promising (according what he told
    me about it).
/*------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
    
********************************
**** General C source stuff ****
********************************

/*------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
    obie!wes at mcvax (Wes Peters):

    Austin Code Works

    Ask for a complete list of the products they carry.  They seem to carry
    quite a variety of C code, and they have some pretty interesting
    data packages as well.
/*------------------------------------------------------------------------*/


    reini at tolsun.oulu.fi
--



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