Re: Very ignorant question


Ross Ferris wrote:
> IIRC you need to use the d;c structures to make exploding sorts work
> (BOM type stuff - oh no, wait, that's the "V" correlative on the data
> portion of the file ...sheesh!)
>
> Whilst "lame", they are better than nothing! As Dawn suggested we
> 'stole'/modified/extended the notion of a simple, single level
> association into something that supports >100 levels of nesting, and in
> her example provide a "primative" (subroutine) function that will
> remove all related values & associations for, say an "emails"
> association.
>
> Whilst I appreciate that we have been given rope, it is perhaps
> unfortunate that we had such a wide choice of knots and trees!
> Personally I think that a little more rigour in the environment would
> have been useful, even if it was by way of (yet another) option or
> correlative buried into the system that COULD have been turned on.
>
> Virtually every "4GL" that I'm aware of for multi-value has had to
> devote resources to filling in these gaps ... again, and again, and
> again.

Yes. It seems no matter what tool you select, there are routines that
developers will do repeatedly. Java has both a good means and a
culture of sharing libraries (along with the usual not-invented-here
thinking too). There doesn't seem to be as much library sharing in the
MV world. People use tools to generate code, but I don't see a lot of
using other people's libraries as building blocks. Is that because the
language is procedural or the culture is too competitive or what? I do
see code examples here and on u2-users and there are a few tools like
DOWNLOAD (for U2 only), but not freely shared libraries with solid
API's that I have seen.

>
> Spilt milk now, and I'm all out of tears!

poor baby

> With all of the latent
> "power" of the dictionaries in the "correlative database" environment
> we call multi-valued, it is perhaps unfortunate that Basic wasn't
> enhanced to harness some of this power as well (D3 ended up getting
> some extensions, but I think to little, to late, and no documentation)

Someone on cdt suggested it sounded like late-binding. I think it is
more like no-binding.

> Historically everyone has been reluctant to embark on change because of
> the "installed base" - yet if you look at the changes that have been
> "forced" upon developers in recent years in the Microsoft world using
> VB (from say 3 through 6, and now .NET 1 & 2) we can see that people
> WILL (albiet reluctantly) adopt change.

Microsoft has a power where few others could get away with such a
approach. I'd like to see build up around the product, perhaps with
some good libraries, without harming the installed base. Make new
friends, but keep the old.

> DO you have any idea how often questions about DOS 6 crop up in the
> Microsft forums? Yet here we find people time warped with technology
> that pre-dates this --> I mean we still use R83 as a base-line ?!?

Yup. I used to think it should be relegated to the trash heap. Then I
saw how much money my budget saved by using it.

> On the one hand, it is a testimony to the underlying technology that
> some of these ancient systems still run. It is also one of the most
> fundamental problems our market faces, because soooo many people think
> that it isn't broken, the users are conditioned to not pay "real
> money", and the Database Vendors appear to have forgotten how to
> evangalize & innovate & champion their product.

You need time and money to market a product (although some creative
approaches might be in order) but it sure seems like it would be a good
investment. I was very disappointed that IBM did not start overt
marketing campaigns. It will be interesting to see if InterSystems
treats their MV product like they treat their MUMPS product or whether
it will seem more like MV compared to DB2.

>
> Hmmm,late at night, way OT and beginning to ramble .... time for a
> snooze (dare I say I need a cat nap 'cause later today we start 2 new
> uni-grads on their journey of discovery, and expect they will have
> their first GUI, web-deployable multi-valued screens working before the
> end of their first working day. Nothing like giving them a feeling of
> REAL accomplishment after they have spent 4 years learning JAVA :-)

It is starting to seem to me that Java is so last year (still good to
teach to college students, however). The scripting languages are
starting to rule the day: JavaScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, and maybe even
Perl. This seeming backwards move from OO to procedural/functional
code will correspond to another seeminglybackwards move--from the RM to
more agile database environments, I predict.

cheers! --dawn

.

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