Practical issues for RDBMS application development

We discuss some functions of relational database management systems (RDBMS) that may help RDBMS users to increase their productivity. First, for a data dictionary, we can define each field attribute characteristic in the create table statement, such as signed, unsigned, negative, nonnegative, list or coded value, range value, default value; uppercase, lowercase or upperlow case; IDstamp value; datestamp value; or computation field. We also point out some inconvenient functions of RDBMS. A more intelligent query optimizer is also needed. For users in a Chinese environment, Chinese characteristics such as field name defining, sorting, and partial searching are required. In addition, for an area center using a horizontal fragmentation scheme, a tool which which can automatically parallel update the other site when the central site's kernel part changes is required.< >