Very interesting piece. As a reality check: I like transactions too, but we have effectively lived without proper logical transactions on Adabas (in all cases where we use an ET-CTR) for a long time, and the sky hasn’t fallen.
I wonder whether the future is relational databases for common business situations (today’s usage), and more specialized tools for more specialized situations. I have trouble seeing anything “unseating” relational where it works, because of the huge investments in the software that works with it, and in the training of developers.
curtispePost author
I’m not sure using an ET-CTR really means we’re “without proper logical transactions.” The ACID properties are still maintained, it’s just that we’ve bundled multiple logical transactions together for performance reasons. (Similar to why we always use RECFM=FB instead of RECFM=F, or to Multifetch when reading Adabas.) To put it another way, we still have a logical transaction, it’s just not as granular as it might be.
I agree about the future: relational databases will never go away, we’ll just see fewer people think that a relational database is the all-sufficient answer.
Very interesting piece. As a reality check: I like transactions too, but we have effectively lived without proper logical transactions on Adabas (in all cases where we use an ET-CTR) for a long time, and the sky hasn’t fallen.
I wonder whether the future is relational databases for common business situations (today’s usage), and more specialized tools for more specialized situations. I have trouble seeing anything “unseating” relational where it works, because of the huge investments in the software that works with it, and in the training of developers.
I’m not sure using an ET-CTR really means we’re “without proper logical transactions.” The ACID properties are still maintained, it’s just that we’ve bundled multiple logical transactions together for performance reasons. (Similar to why we always use RECFM=FB instead of RECFM=F, or to Multifetch when reading Adabas.) To put it another way, we still have a logical transaction, it’s just not as granular as it might be.
I agree about the future: relational databases will never go away, we’ll just see fewer people think that a relational database is the all-sufficient answer.