 






           Software
           Product
           Description

           _________________________________________________________

           PRODUCT NAME:  VAX Rdb/VMS, Version 4.0      SPD 25.59.12
                          Relational Database Management
                          System

           DESCRIPTION

           VAX Rdb/VMS is a full-function, SQL-based relational database
           management system designed for the VMS Operating System. It
           is intended for general purpose, multi-user, centralized or
           distributed applications.

           VAX Rdb/VMS supports a complete set of languages, utilities,
           and precompilers that enable users to maintain and manip-
           ulate databases. VAX Rdb/VMS implements ANSI/ISO SQL as its
           standard interface to the database.

           VAX Rdb/VMS also includes SQL/Services, a client/server pro-
           tocol that provides remote access to VAX Rdb/VMS databases
           from various desktop platforms.

           Features

           Data Definition Language (DDL)

           Users can issue DDL statements through the interactive SQL
           and RDO utilities, the SQL precompilers, or the SQL module
           language in order to accomplish the following:

           o  Create schemas (database), tables (relations), views, columns
              (fields), domains (global fields), and indexes (both as-
              cending and descending)

           o  Create storage areas for tables and indexes

           o  Define constraints in table definitions

           o  Define triggers for table definitions

                                    DIGITAL                June 1991

                                                         AE-DA11M-TE

 



           VAX Rdb/VMS, Version 4.0                    SPD 25.59.12
           Relational Database Management System

           o  Grant and revoke access rights to schemas, tables, views
              and columns

           o  Alter definitions of tables, columns, storage areas, and
              access rights

           o  Delete definitions of tables, views, columns, indexes,
              constraints, triggers, storage areas, and access rights

           o  Restructure schemas on-line, without unload/reload

           o  Add comments to definitions of domains, tables, views,
              columns, and indexes

           o  Define collating sequences for international character
              sets

           Data Manipulation Language (DML)

           Users can issue DML statements through all interactive, pre-
           compiler, and module language interfaces to accomplish the
           following:

           o  Perform standard data manipulation operations: insert,
              select, update, and delete

           o  Perform standard relational operations: select, join, union
              (SQL only) and project

           o  Access multiple databases in the same program

           o  Used with DECdtm software, perform coordinated data ma-
              nipulation operations across multiple databases (Two Phase
              Commit)

           o  Manipulate data using:

              -  Precompiled SQL or RDO DML statements embedded in high-
                 level language programs

              -  Compiled DML statements written in SQL module language
                 and called from any 3GL language that complies with
                 the VMS calling standards

                                       2

 



           VAX Rdb/VMS, Version 4.0                    SPD 25.59.12
           Relational Database Management System

              -  Dynamically executed SQL statements accepted or gen-
                 erated at program run-time

              -  Interactive SQL or RDO DML statements.

              -  RDO statements called from high-level language pro-
                 grams

           o  Optimize queries automatically, using:

              o  Index selection on one or more columns in a table

              o  Join order

              o  Join by sort/merge

           o  Perform atomic transactions completed by commit or roll-
              back

           Database Utilities

           o  Logical import/export, for migrating data and/or meta-
              data to another Rdb database

           o  On-line backup/restore, both incremental and full at the
              database or storage area level

           o  Database verify utility to check and verify integrity of
              data structures in the database

           o  Analysis utility for analyzing database page usage, space
              usage by tables and space usage and number of levels of
              indexes

           o  Statistical utility for performance monitoring and database
              dump utility for database analysis

           o  Load/unload utility which can operate on each table

           o  ALTER utility for modifying the contents of corrupted database
              storage areas. (This function is not recommended or re-
              quired for normal use.)

           Interactive Utilities: SQL and RDO

                                       3

 



           VAX Rdb/VMS, Version 4.0                    SPD 25.59.12
           Relational Database Management System

           o  Support all data manipulation operations: insert, select,
              update, and delete

           o  Provide online help for features, language syntax, and
              errors

           o  Allow interactive editing of previous commands

           o  Provide SHOW facility to display database and session char-
              acteristics

           o  RDO statements can be included in programs, using the Callable
              RDO facility

           o  SQL supports the use of LSE templates to assist in en-
              tering syntactically correct statements

           Concurrency and Integrity Controls

           Concurrency

           o  Full concurrent access (storage, retrieval, update, and
              deletion) in a multi-user environment

           o  Multiple applications can access the same database con-
              currently

           o  Optional read-only (snapshot) mode for increased concur-
              rency in large retrieval and report writing applications.
              When a read-only transaction is started, the operations
              do not lock out other users.

           Integrity

           o  Validity checking at the column level

           o  Referential integrity through column constraint check-
              ing from one or more tables

           o  Rollback of failed transactions, both automatic and program-
              controlled

           o  Recovery-unit journaling with transaction rollback re-
              covery

                                       4

 



           VAX Rdb/VMS, Version 4.0                    SPD 25.59.12
           Relational Database Management System

           o  After-image journaling with rollforward recovery

           o  Triggers: execution of one or more actions when certain
              database conditions are met

           Security

           o  Database file protected by VMS file protection

           o  Rights to perform database operations are kept in a set
              of Access Control Lists (ACLs) associated with entities
              in the database. ACLs are stored in the database and main-
              tained by the owner of the database. ACLs can be updated
              at any time.

           o  Access Control Lists govern access to:

              -  Tables

              -  Views

              -  Data definitions

              -  Data manipulation operations

              -  Database utility operations

           o  Logging facility to log all database access requests.

           Languages

           o  Precompiler support - The SQL precompiler supports an op-
              tional FIPS flagger, allowing the user to identify SQL
              statements which are not in the current ANSI/ISO SQL stan-
              dard.






                                       5

 



           VAX Rdb/VMS, Version 4.0                    SPD 25.59.12
           Relational Database Management System

           _________________________________________________________
           3GL Lan-
           guage                Supported Rdb/VMS Precompiler

           ______________SQL$PRE___RDBPRE_____RDML__________________

           VAX BASIC     -         X          -

           VAX C         X         -          X

           VAX COBOL     X         X          -

           VAX FORTRAN   X         X          -

           VAX PASCAL    X         -          X

           VAX Ada       X         -          -

           VAX_PL/I______X_________-__________-_____________________

           o  Module Language - SQL statements can be grouped into mod-
              ules and linked with any language that uses the VMS call-
              ing standard using the module language processor. The SQL
              Module language also supports the FIPS flagger option.

           o  Dynamic SQL - Access through the SQL Dynamic Interface
              for all languages that support the VMS calling standard,
              although only programs written in VAX PL/I, VAX Ada and
              VAX C can use the full power of dynamic SQL, because these
              languages have built-in dynamic memory handling capabil-
              ities.

           o  Callable RDO - Access through Callable RDO for all lan-
              guages that support the VMS calling standard.

           o  SQL/Services VMS client applications can be written in
              any language that supports the VMS calling standard. MS-DOS®
              and OS/2[TM] client applications can be written in any
              language that supports the Microsoft® C calling standard.
              ULTRIX client applications should be written in portable
              C. Macintosh[TM] client applications can be written in
              MPW[TM] C.

                                       6

 



           VAX Rdb/VMS, Version 4.0                    SPD 25.59.12
           Relational Database Management System

           Physical Storage Characteristics

           o  Data in the database is kept either in a single file or
              distributed between multiple files across a single or mul-
              tiple volumes. Each database storage area (file) has an
              accompanying file which may be used during read-only "snap-
              shot" operations.

              -  A single file database can span multiple disk volumes
                 when it exceeds the storage capacity of a single disk
                 structure.

              -  The multifile database feature allows the database to
                 be distributed among multiple volumes on the same node
                 or cluster per user specification.

           o  A storage area may be defined as read-only

           o  Table structure

              -  Duplicate rows can be eliminated

              -  No required ordering of columns on storage or retrieval

           o  Storage structure

              -  B-Tree (sorted in ascending or descending order) or
                 hash indexes on tables

              -  Periodic reorganization of database is NOT required

           o  Data types

              -  ASCII text (1-32767 bytes)

              -  Varying string (1-32767 bytes)

              -  Date

              -  Signed byte (1 byte)

              -  Signed word (16-bit) integer

              -  Signed longword (32-bit) integer

                                       7

 



           VAX Rdb/VMS, Version 4.0                    SPD 25.59.12
           Relational Database Management System

              -  Signed quadword (64-bit) integer

              -  Single precision floating point (F_floating)

              -  Double precision floating point (G_floating)

              -  List cursors (Segmented strings) for storing large amounts
                 of unstructured data, such as documents, voice, or graph-
                 ics SQL/Services supports the following data types only:

              -  ASCIZ - Null terminated ASCII string used to repre-
                 sent all strings, numeric values and dates.

              -  VARCHAR - Signed word integer followed by an array of
                 8-bit bytes used to store any type of data, includ-
                 ing binary. The maximum number of bytes in a VARCHAR
                 data item is 16383.

              -  List cursors (Segmented strings)

           Remote Database Access

           o  Application programs developed to access VAX Rdb/VMS databases
              and running under VMS on a given node in a DECnet net-
              work can:

              -  Access VAX Rdb/VMS databases on the same node

              -  Access VAX Rdb/VMS databases on other nodes in the net-
                 work

           o  SQL/Services provides remote access to VAX Rdb/VMS databases.
              Application programs interface to VAX SQL/Services through
              an Application Programming Interface (API) set of callable
              routines. These routines communicate via DECnet with the
              target database through the VAX SQL/Services server pro-
              cess residing on the VMS system. The VMS server can also
              work with the RdbAccess data access products to retrieve
              data from other systems.
              Client application programming libraries are provided for
              VMS, ULTRIX, MS-DOS, OS/2 and Macintosh.

                                       8

 



           VAX Rdb/VMS, Version 4.0                    SPD 25.59.12
           Relational Database Management System

           Data Dictionary

           o  Stores data definitions in the database file itself, in
              the form of tables

           o  Allows on-line retrieval of data definitions

           o  Allows modification of data definitions using interac-
              tive data definition language

           o  Allows storage of data definitions in the VAX Common Data
              Dictionary/Plus. The VAX CDD/Plus is optional but rec-
              ommended. Using VAX CDD/Plus to store definitions in a
              dictionary for an Rdb/VMS database allows users to:

              -  Define fields and relations in the database based on
                 dictionary definitions

              -  Share standard definitions among several databases

              -  Analyze the impact of changing shared definitions
                 Sharing common dictionary definitions provides con-
                 sistency of definitions across the database and other
                 software products as users develop an application.

















                                       9

 



           VAX Rdb/VMS, Version 4.0                    SPD 25.59.12
           Relational Database Management System

           VAXcluster/Local Area VAXcluster

           o  VAX Rdb/VMS in a VAXcluster environment allows concur-
              rent, multiple-processor database access. VAX Rdb/VMS au-
              tomatically recovers the database if a processor in the
              VAXcluster fails and provides optional after-image jour-
              naling to further protect the integrity of the VAXclus-
              ter database.

           o  VAX Rdb/VMS uses the VMS distributed lock manager to syn-
              chronize cluster-wide updates to the database root file,
              to initiate the automatic recovery process when a node
              fails, and to coordinate concurrent updates to the same
              database from processes running on different nodes.

           o  VAXclusters offer higher availability to VAX Rdb/VMS databases
              in a properly configured VAXcluster environment.

           Distributed Database Environment

           Installation of the VAX Data Distributor optional layered
           product with Rdb/VMS provides:

           o  Extraction of entire databases or parts of them, into tar-
              get databases on remote systems.

           o  Extraction rollup, which is similar to extraction, with
              the additional capability of extracting relations and fields
              from multiple source databases into a single, new tar-
              get database.

           o  Store and forward replication. Once a target database has
              been created, updates to the source database are forwarded
              to the target database(s) at scheduled intervals or on
              demand.

           Limits and Parameters

           o  Maximum number of relations and views in a database: The
              recommended limit is 4096, however the practical limit
              will vary according to the complexity of the database,

                                      10

 



           VAX Rdb/VMS, Version 4.0                    SPD 25.59.12
           Relational Database Management System

              especially the number of views, indices and other log-
              ical areas contained in the database. Metadata volatil-
              ity can also affect this limit.

           o  Maximum number of bytes in a record: 65,271

           o  Maximum number of fields in a relation: 2000

           o  Maximum index key size: 254

           o  Maximum length of a database object name: 31 characters

           o  Minimum database page size: 512 bytes

           o  Maximum size of database file: limited by available phys-
              ical devices

           o  Maximum number of database attaches: 2032

           HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS

           VAX, MicroVAX, VAXstation, or VAXserver configuration as spec-
           ified in the System Support Addendum (SSA 25.59.11-x).

           SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS *

           VMS Operating System
           VMS Workstation Software (workstations only)
           DECnet-VAX

           For SQL/Services MS-DOS platform:

           MS-DOS Operating System
           DECnet PCSA Client for DOS
           C Runtime Library

           For SQL/Services ULTRIX platform:

           ULTRIX Operating System
           DECnet-ULTRIX

           For SQL/Services OS/2 platform:

                                      11

 



           VAX Rdb/VMS, Version 4.0                    SPD 25.59.12
           Relational Database Management System

           OS/2 Operating System
           PCSA for OS/2

           For SQL/Services Macintosh platform:

           Macintosh Operating System
           Digital's Macintosh Integration Product

           *  Refer to the System Support Addendum for availability and
              required versions of prerequisite software (SSA 25.59.11-
              x).

           ORDERING INFORMATION

           VAX Rdb/VMS Full Development Option (VD2)

           Software Licenses: QL-VD2A*-**
           Software Media: QA-VD2A*-**
           Software Documentation: QA-VD2AA-GZ
           Software Product Services: QT-VD2A*-**

           VAX Rdb/VMS Interactive Option (VCL)

           Software Licenses: QL-VCLA*-**
           Software Media: QA-VCLA*-**
           Software Documentation: QA-VCLAA-GZ
           Software Product Services: QT-VCLA*-**














                                      12

 



           VAX Rdb/VMS, Version 4.0                    SPD 25.59.12
           Relational Database Management System

           VAX Rdb/VMS Run-Time Option

           Note:The license for the Run-Time option is included with
           VMS.

           Software Media: QA-358A*-**
           Software Documentation: QA-358AA-GZ
           Software Product Services: QT-358A*-**

           *  Denotes variant fields. For additional information on li-
              censes, services and media, refer to the appropriate price
              book.

           SOFTWARE LICENSING

           Product-Specific Licensing Information

           Full Development Option

           The VAX Rdb/VMS Full Development Option includes the base
           database software, the dynamic SQL engine, SQL/Services server,
           full database maintenance/ administrative facilities (RMU),
           full database definition and manipulation facilities (In-
           teractive SQL, Interactive RDO, Callable RDO), all avail-
           able language precompilers (SQL/Pre, Rdb/Pre, RDML) and com-
           pilers (SQL Module Language), and the SQL/Services client
           API libraries.

           The Full Development Option is the standard license.

           Interactive Option

           The Rdb/VMS Interactive Option includes the base database
           software, the dynamic SQL engine, SQL/Services server, full
           database maintenance/administrative facilities (RMU), full
           interactive database definition and manipulation facilities
           (Interactive SQL and/or Interactive RDO), and the Callable
           RDO facility.



                                      13

 



           VAX Rdb/VMS, Version 4.0                    SPD 25.59.12
           Relational Database Management System

           The purpose of the Interactive Option is to support execu-
           tion of previously developed applications, as well as to pro-
           vide the ability to perform database definition and inter-
           active queries using Interactive SQL and/or Interactive RDO.

           Program development is not supported under the Interactive
           Option.

           Run-Time Option

           A Run-Time Option of VAX Rdb/VMS is available. The right-
           to-use license for the Rdb/VMS Run-Time Option is included
           in the VMS license.

           In addition to the base database software, the Run-Time Op-
           tion includes the dynamic SQL engine, SQL/Services server
           process, the database maintenance utility (RMU), and a sub-
           set of the both the RDO Interactive Utility and Callable RDO
           facilities. The purpose of the Run-Time Only version is to
           support the execution of previously developed applications
           on a target machine.

           Interactive data definition and program development are not
           supported under the Run-Time Option.

           The software components contained in each license option is
           summarized in the following chart:

           _________________________________________________________
           _____________Runtime___InteractiveDevelopment____________

           Base         X         X          X
           database
           software

           Dynamic      X         X          X
           SQL engine




                                      14

 



           VAX Rdb/VMS, Version 4.0                    SPD 25.59.12
           Relational Database Management System

           _________________________________________________________
           _____________Runtime___InteractiveDevelopment____________

           SQL          X         X          X
           /Services
           Server

           RMU          X         X          X

           RDO Util-    X [1]     X          X
           ity

           Callable     X [2]     X          X
           RDO

           Interactive  -         X          X
           SQL Util-
           ity

           SQL Module   -         -          X
           Language
           Compiler

           SQL          -         -          X
           /Services
           Client
           APIs

           SQL, RDML,   -         -          X
           Rdb/Pre
           Precompil-
           ers______________________________________________________

           [1]  A subset of RDO commands (data manipulation only) is
                available in the Run-Time Option.

           [2]  A subset of Callable RDO commands (data manipulation
                only) is available in the Run-Time Option.

           This software is furnished under the licensing provisions
           of Digital Equipment Corporation's Standard Terms and Con-
           ditions. For more information about Digital's licensing terms
           and policies, contact your local Digital office.

           LICENSING MANAGEMENT FACILITY

                                      15

 



           VAX Rdb/VMS, Version 4.0                    SPD 25.59.12
           Relational Database Management System

           This layered product supports the VMS License Management Fa-
           cility.

           License units for this product are allocated on a CPU ca-
           pacity basis.

           For more information on the License Management Facility, re-
           fer to the VMS Operating System Software Product Descrip-
           tion (SPD 25.01.xx) or the VMS Operating System documenta-
           tion set.

           For more information on Digital's licensing policies, con-
           tact your local Digital office.




























                                      16

 



           VAX Rdb/VMS, Version 4.0                    SPD 25.59.12
           Relational Database Management System

           SOFTWARE PRODUCT SERVICES

           A variety of service options are available from Digital. For
           more information, contact your local Digital office.

           SOFTWARE WARRANTY

           Warranty for this software product is provided by Digital
           with the purchase of a license for the product as defined
           in the Software Warranty Addendum.

           ®    MS-DOS and Microsoft are registered trademarks of
                Microsoft Corporation.

           [TM] OS/2 and DB2 are trademarks of International Busi-
                ness Machines Corporation.

           ®    XT and AT are registered trademarks of International
                Business Machines Corporation.

           [TM] Macintosh, MPW, Apple and Appleshare are trademarks
                of Apple Computer, Inc.

           [TM] The DIGITAL Logo, VAX, VMS, MicroVAX, MicroVMS,
                VAXstation, Rdb/VMS, ULTRIX, DECnet, DEC, CDD/Plus,
                VAX Ada, VAX BASIC, VAX COBOL, VAX C, VAX PASCAL,
                VAX FORTRAN and VAXserver are trademarks of Digital
                Equipment Corporation.













                                      17
