Nice to hear about you, Mr. Neumann, after such a long time. I will try
to reply your questions from first hand, but I am also very interested
in other replies.

Heinz-Geerd Neumann wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> could anybody report about experiance with ARTBASE, an OODBMS written
> extirely in ST-80 / VW by a company called "ArtinApples" in Bratislava
> (Slovakia), please?
> 
> I am looking for a DB system to give objects persistance and to avoid
> "squeezing nice round objects into an ugly square relational database".
> Also it must be run-time royalty free. I got to know it in 94, when it was
> still under development and very slow. That's not the problem, but I wonder
> about stability of the system since the author company does not seem
> to be very successful and I have not yet heard of anybody using this system.

ArtBASE had been developed and supported until July 1997. Since that
time the whole source code (incl. server) had been published on the Web
and it is not being supported anymore. Last available version is for
VW2.52. However, there are other guys around who have made the necessary
fixes for VW3.0.

ArtBASE had not been 'very slow'. In 1997 we have developed a prototype
version of ArtBASE4.0 with VW2.52 and Oracle8's Object Option
(completely different from the Monza Project of PPS/D/OS...). Different
from expectations, the result was comparable with ArtBASE 2.5 from the
point of view of performance. Simply, .... "squeezing nice round objects
into an ugly square relational database" (you can't beat the natural
laws, can you ? ;-).

ArtBASE (the "old one", for VW) is now royalty free. Everybody is
invited to port or reengineer it under Squeak or whatever kind of
Smalltalk (or Java ;-), as well. If the project will seam reasonable, I
can help with a part of my capacity and the efforts of some of my
diploma students.

The "author company" has not been "very successful" in a completely
different market and political environment than you and most of the
Squeakers are used to. Among others, we have developed a large complex
application (technological and geographical information systems, incl.
workflow, simulation, GIS with vector and rasted data, image processing,
high quality output to plotters and printers, and much more) for Slovak
Gas Industry early 1997 (project since early 1994) using ArtBASE on
houndreds of workstations on very many sites (each with 1 to ~15
workstations) interconnected with own automated replication service
(property of Slovak Gas Industry). The total size of local databases was
from several houndreds od MBytes to several GBytes, the total final size
in the WAN is estimated to several Tbytes. 

The system had been tested very intensively by the customer for about
two years (incl. large size data, replication, ...). The final version
had been accepted by the customer in mid 1997. The stability was
sufficient for this application. It has to be stated, that due to
internal political reasons in Slovakia the customer still did not decide
about complete roll out of the system (however, it is being used on some
isolated sites since early 1997 in routine operation).

About the "success" of ArtBASE as a product: it has much to do with the
success of PPS/D/OS  ;-(. Already in March 1992 PPS was interested in
ArtBASE (when demonstrating ArtBASE at the CeBIT in Hannover with Georg
Heeg), the first "normal" version (a kind of product beta, incl.
handbook, ...) had been demonstrated to its representative during OOPSLA
in Vancouver. That time it was really possible and reasonable to put a
few of ArtBASE functions to the VM and to obtain an ODBMS and
distributed Smalltalk with distributed transactions as reward (as
contrary of the single-user ObjectWorks and later VisualWorks system).
The decision had been made by PPS (... "they never wanted to become a
database company, Smalltalk should stay language and development
enviroment only"). Hence, we have tried to run the product business by
ourselves from Slovakia. In 1994-1995 there have been about 100
registered users worldwide (and 7 distributors). In 1997, with the
earlier "success" of ObjectStore for Smalltalk, and with the success of
PPS itself, we have decided to finish support of the product and to
publish it completely for those, to whom our previous efforts could be
helpful. Still, we continued using it in our projects.

Any more questions ?

Augustin Mrazik