> Is there no system which gives the economy and convenience of splitting
> data into relational tables but without the restriction of fixed-length
> fields?
 
_BASISplus_ from IDI in Columbus, Ohio offers the functonality of other
relational databases and allows any field to be any length with every word
fully indexed. The only practical limit is disk storage capacity. Since
databases can be spread across multiple hosts with multiple disks, the real
limit becomes money.   It runs on VMS, Unix, IBM mainframes and perhaps a
few other platforms.  It is sold primarily as a document management engine
and is used by law firms and others with large corporate document systems.
CHIN uses a predecessor, BASIS, a flat file full-text database.  Mystic
Seaport uses Bp as does the Mussee de Orsey (sp?) in France.
 
Bp has all the functionality a museum would ever want in a database, but
administration is not for the faint of heart and interface tools are clunky
at best.
 
OCLC recently acquired IDI so there may be some progress in these later areas.
 
Guy Hermann   | Mystic Seaport Museum
[log in to unmask]   |  Mystic, Conn., USA