Menlo Park, California-based Gupta Technologies Inc has SQLBase Server 5.0 ready to ship within 30 days. It is scalable over MS-DOS, OS/2, Unix – initially only SunOS Sparc-station servers – and NetWare systems – as a NetWare Loadable Module for NetWare 3.11. No changes are needed at the client application level in terms of coding when the server is switched. Gupta reckons that SQLBase 5.0 does 6.7 transactions per second under MS-DOS, 24tps under OS/2, 67tps under NetWare as a loadable module with a price-per-tpsB of $2,036, and 66tps on a Sun Sparcstation 1. Apart from the last, the benchmarks were done on a 33MHz 80486-based Compaq Computer Corp Systempro. The Query Optimiser is enhanced to reduce time needed to compile and execute complex queries such as multi-level joins and nested queries. SQLBase 5.0 supports partitioned databases on multiple drives with hundreds of Gigabytes of data. It adds Windows 3.0 Application Programming Interfaces for TCP/IP and SPX/IPX. It also supports scrollable cursors, isolation levels, cursor context preservation and support for binary large objects and read-only databases for CD-ROM. Gupta claims complete DB2-style referential integrity including syntax and symantics and supports IBM’s EBCDIC character set; the Cobol Precompiler is enhanced. All the five-user versions cost $1,000, and unlimited user licences will cost $3,000 for MS-DOS, $4,000 for OS/2, $5,000 for NetWare and $10,000 for SunOS Unix.
