$Id: README,v 1.1 1998/05/29 20:31:00 carlos Exp $

                    NoSQL RDBMS

NoSQL is a fast, portable, relational database management
system without arbitrary limits, (other than memory and
processor speed) that runs under, and interacts with, the
UNIX Operating System.

It uses the Operator/Stream DBMS paradigm described in "Unix
Review", March, 1991, page 24, entitled "A 4GL Language".
There are a number of "operators" that each perform a unique
function on the data. The "stream" is suplied by the UNIX
Input/Output redirection mechanism. Therefore each operator
processes some data and then passes it along to the next
operator via the UNIX pipe function. This is very efficient as
UNIX pipes are implemented in memory. NoSQL is compliant with
the "Relational Model". Read the document "4gl.ps", included
with the distribution, for further details.

See file "INSTALL" for installation instructions.


Performance issues :

The relation operators provided with NoSQL are either Perl or Shell
scripts. In normal operation, commands need to be piped into one
other to produce the final output (Operator-Stream Paradigm).
This is fine for using the operators interactively, where the
overhead involved by spawning the relevant interpreters several
times may not matter much.  However, if NoSQL's data structures
(tables) are used as a database back-end for other programs (like
www CGI scripts), then you should consider taking a more efficient
approach. Faster re-implementations of some of the operators can
be found in the ./src/ subdirectory.


Please report bugs to C.Strozzi, <carlos@linux.it>

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