Marten Feldtmann wrote:

> OODBMS (Versant, Objectivity or Gemstone) have indices like the relational
> counterparts, which can speed up a query very much !!!

No one mentioned Magma, which supports large, indexed collections
out-of-the-box.  It quickly and transparently pages to whatever key-range of a
LargeCollection you specify, and presents it in key order.

While it, too, has very slow bulk-load performance, I hope to alleviate that
soon (I have been focusing on performance improvements for the last month or
two).

> I always looked at persistency solutions and all I have to say is,
> that I always went back to relational databases due to these problems
> you mention.

"These problems" are usually symptomatic of domain-models derived from
"thinking in tables."  Many corporate applications these days seem to have a
"spreadsheet" look-and-feel to them; lots and lots of tables of "data"
everywhere.

Where are the objects? 
A:  There aren't any, at least not as far as the user is concerned.

For complex domain models, I believe a ODBMS will perform 10 - 100x faster than
a relational solution, not to mention the corresponding reduction-factor in
development time/effort.  For simple models with just a few massive tables,
relationals will be faster (maybe 2-3x).

One day, corporate software will provide regular-users with encapsulation of
their "data" into objects.  Hollywood offers a glimpse of something like that
in "The Matrix Reloaded," that white-screen hover-craft traffic-controller
thing..