To Duane George: DevCon / summary of the things that are most important to us

[thomas.koller@macos.ch]

 Posted by:  Thomas Koller 

Hi Duane

What has been shown at the DevCon was very promising and we really had the
feeling that Unifiy cared about our problems and wishes.

Here I will give you a summary of the things that are most important to us:

Newsgroups / Forums

The Newgroups on newsgroup.guptaworldwide.com should be integrated into the
Unify-Forums, especially the Bugreport. Is it technically possible to
transfer the old entries of the newgroups into the Forums?

What we also miss, is a list of the bugreports that have got a defect number
(a group 'defects'?). This would help us to decide whether to report a bug
or to install the latest msp.

TD 5.1

We would like to have the following alterations in the TableWindow:
- A smaller row heigth (as in the Datagrid)
- A better display of the row with the focus (as in the Datagrid)

Extension of the Active Coding Assistant / Debug
- Support of F10 and Ctrl F10 to jump to and back from the definition of
an item (Like in IceTea InteliSal)
- The possibility to display in the debug-mode not only the content of
variables but also of functional class if I move over the item

In any case we are locking forward to the first msp and hope that a lot of
the bugs listed in the newsgroup are fixed!

SqlTalk / Database Console

We sugest the following new features
- Output-Window of select commands in the form of a Datagrid
- Copy/Paste between Output-Windows
- Edit/Save of Data in the Output-Windows
- Export of the Data in the Output-Window as CSV or XML-Files
- Wizard/Intellisense that helps building queries
- Script generator for Unload/Load, Drop/Create Tables
- Repair functions (i.e. Logfile-Repair)
- Help with Performance-Optimisation (Extended Pages, Index Balance,
DB-Fragmentaion - see Screenshots)

The idea for some of these features we have taken from Aqua Data Studio
(www.aquafold.com) which supports different database products and MySql
Administrator which is MySql specific. Both tools have free versions.

I will also post this text in the Newsgroups, so that also the other
developers know about it.

Regards
Thomas Koller

[FRBhote]

 Posted by:  F R Bhote 

I wonder why anyone would want this newsgroup to be shut down. I think we
are all very comfortable with it - especially the fact that we can view it
offline.

TD 5.1 - Performance ! There was someone here who compared it with 1.1.2 or
something and immediately saw the perofrmance drop.

SqlBase - Just last night we had an 807 error which left us with no
alternative but to unload and load the database - at a very crucial time. If
these errors were a bit more specific (which table, which index) it would be
extremely helpful.

[Chris Anderson]

 Posted by:  Chris Anderson 


It would help if we could see the database before you unload/load.

We've just fixed a corruption bug and will be putting out a new release of
SQLBase 11 as soon as it's done being tested. However, that fix is based
on 2-3 databases where we actually could study the footprint of the
corruption. I know we've fixed that footprint, but I'd like to know if
there's something else out there that we haven't seen as yet.

--
Chris Anderson
Technical Support Manager
Unify Corporation

[Chris Anderson]

 Posted by:  Chris Anderson 


At the risk of being branded a heretic, I'm not fond of the newsgroups for a
few reasons:

1. Threading routinely breaks depending on posters newsreader
2. Sometimes difficult to figure out who the customer is
3. Difficult to search properly
4. No method of marking a post as important, or sticky, or "keep"
5. Cross posting means that information is spread out over multiple groups

Admittedly, that's based on my own biases with what I try to do with the
Gupta newsgroups -- technical support. Usenet is fine for a conversation,
not so much for support.

Again, IMHO :-)

--
Chris Anderson
Technical Support Manager
Unify Corporation

[Dave Rabelink]

 Posted by:  Dave Rabelink 

My opinion.

There is one major advantage for having a newsgroup : offline reading
and independant storage of 'old' deleted postings.
Right now I use Agent as newsreader and I have all newsgroups in
there, the new and old ones. They are completely downloaded which
contains the old gupta newsgroup, the beta 5.0 and the latest
newsgroups.
Searching is fast, the attachments are already there and I can place
it on a USB stick to cary around (Agent and data can be started from
the stick from anywhere without having an internet connection).

Posts will always be kept, every downloaded thread is locked so it
will not be deleted.

But I agree a web forum has also its advantages.

What is VERY important when the newsgroups are replaced by a web forum
is keeping all the postings in the past. There are thousands of
postings and all of them are valuable. Most posters there are not even
working with TD anymore but have contributed immense input and the
posts are still read and used today.

I would not like to have multiple locations, there should be one with
all the info from the newsgroups. Dont even think about closing down
these newsgroups without porting the posts to the new web forum. That
would be a huge mistake.

A webforum should have this :

- All posts from the newsgroups. The old and beta newsgroups also
- A set of subforums based on topic.
- Good performance in browsing and searching
- Unlimited types of attachments and sizes

Right now the web forum has just a few subforums. I think Unify should
ask us what subforums should be there.

(I see the foum has a wrong timesetting, should be fixed)

The foum software could maybe be changed to another better one.
Personally I like the React webforum :

http://www.react.nl/index.php?PageID=1

Sample of a forum based on this base software :

http://gathering.tweakers.net/

My 2 eurocents

Dave

[thomas.koller@macos.ch]

 Posted by:  Thomas Koller 

Talking about the old newsgroups...

the old 'readonly' newsgroups are no more accessible. Can you bring them
back, Gupta-People?
Thanks
Thomas

[Chris Anderson]

 Posted by:  Chris Anderson 


Doubtful. There are no "turned off" newsgroups that I can find. I suspect
that these were retired prior to the buyout by Unify.

--
Chris Anderson
Technical Support Manager
Unify Corporation

[Chris Anderson]

 Posted by:  Chris Anderson 

Dave,

I like the forum software that you pointed out. Do they have an
english-language website?

One of the reasons that we've kept the Gupta newsgroups has been that I
didn't have the time to spend initially on figuring out how to export the
groups into phpBB. If this has a method of doing that automatically, I'm
all attention.

BTW, time is set in your profile. You can set your own timezone there.

Past that, I generally agree with your comments.

--
Chris Anderson
Technical Support Manager
Unify Corporation

[Tony]

 Posted by:  Tony 

Hi,
I have seen that one of the most powerful forum tool is vBulletin.
I think you will have there a lot of features, and it's cheap too.
Just in case that you are really looking for a product.

[Chris Anderson]

 Posted by:  Chris Anderson 

We're currently using phpBB. I chose that primarily because it was easy and
I had prior experience with it, not necessarily because it was the best at
what it did. I'm open to using new software, but it would need to be
enough better than phpBB to justify the cost of moving to it. I'm more
concerned with people costs than software costs, though.

--
Chris Anderson
Technical Support Manager
Unify Corporation

[Jim McNamara]

 Posted by:  Jim McNamara 


Amen to that - I got some heat lately for junking a couple 4 year old PCs
without looking at them - costs more to restage the O/S than they're worth.