The next version of DB2, they just don't know it yet....

Ah, blended with Dbase so as to be all distributedy I suppose.

My apologies, I got a little excited there. DB2 of course. Subconsciously, I thought they may have moved on a version number from the early eighties when it was first released.

About the same time as Oracle, Sybase and Unix, wasn't it? That is to say, the era from which pretty much all software used in large scale commercial data storage originates.

True enough. All a result of the work of a Mr Codd...otherwise we'd be making a living off hierarchical databases. Maybe.

As it happens, I have here at my left elbow a program what I wrote this week that takes IMS data and whops it into a format from which it can be easily reformatted for SQL Loader. I suppose I am making a living, at least a bit of a living, from a heirachical database.

I met Ted Codd, btw, at an IBM lab in the desert. He and Date were peddling n rules for relational databases. I've forgotten how many there were but I except they came as a package; pay for ten, get three now with four more "under development" and three to follow. Like DBMS and, later, Platinum products.

Why is it at your left elbow? Is it on punch cards?

Yes, I've replaced all the red stickers that fix the mispunching with shiny ones in case the client has one of them new fangled optical readers instead of a mechanical one.

"And Nerd shall speaketh unto Nerd, But the people shall not understandeth and yet wonder why the Pimp maketh so much dosh."

Are you mocking my favourite beer

Recycling, innit. Once you've punched the cards sell the deck many times over.