🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <PCG.90Nov14151603@odin.cs.aber.ac.uk> pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) writes:
> As to this I have good news! DBMSes and 4GLs are often (anectodal but
> frequent evidence) impressively *faster* than any ad-hoc program that
> does the same. NOTE: *the same*, not similar but much much simpler.
  [mainly when manipulating large masses of data]

Sure, use the right tool for the job. I once wrote an adventure program
in APL as a learning excercise, but I'd be hard pressed to recommend it
to anyone for that purpose. It's a killer language for tasks that need a
lot of matrix operations, though. But for tasks that don't lend themselves
to the database model a DBMS is really really slow...

[also, as an aside... you can get the same sort of speed with a killer
 subroutine library that duplicates the DBMS operations embedded in your
 mid-level language: I believe Oracle sells such a beast]

And even if you're manipulating large amounts of data, you may be better
off with a lower throughput but quicker-responding mid-level language. I
wouldn't want to manipulate MIDI data in real-time with Oracle, even if you
are dealing with large masses of pretty homogenous data.
-- 
Peter da Silva.   `-_-'
+1 713 274 5180.   'U`
peter@ferranti.com