Tom, I think this is a germane and timely question. It correlates with the 'if it isn't broke don't fix it' rule of thumb and is particularly relevant to the 4D community because of the longevity of many of our projects. In your case you have probably done all you can. There doesn't appear to be any technical reason for changing the clients -right now-. So let them be.
They may be able to exist happily in 32 bit land for years to come. Or it may go sideways in six months. By making the change now you can do it in a more controlled way. The day after something breaks it's more of a crisis (aka: expensive). You can't necessarily say when it will matter but you can confidently say one day it will matter. All you can do is recommend. Frankly any given 4D server deployment has come to look to me more like a floating river party. we've got a big house boat (4D server) surrounded by various speed boats, canoes, kayaks and folks on inner tubes all loosely roped together happily bobbing along. The argument for keeping everyone updated is that the river keeps changing and the whole party keeps moving, however slowly, along. The 'river' is the technological environment. A 20 year old 4D db is most likely running in a different environment than it was written in. Might matter, might not. If the deployment has Macs in the mix the imperative to update regularly is more pressing because Apple, for better or worse, is not sitting still. The next OS is going to be 64 bit only. 4D is going to be 64 bit only. More and more things are going to become 64 bit only or depend on something that is. If a company exec uses Macs odds are pretty good some weekend they will update their machine and *poof* there goes 4D. More likely will be changes in security protocols that will catch up with them. And the factor that drags the bottom of this river is new hardware delivered with the newest OS at the time. There are companies that simply refuse to change. I still see some outfits with some old 8086 terminal, complete with amber phosphorescent displays, for just this reason sitting next to the other computer that does everything else. Very rare anymore. And very brittle but hey, if it ain't broke... -- Kirk Brooks San Francisco, CA ======================= What can be said, can be said clearly, and what you can’t say, you should shut up about *Wittgenstein and the Computer * ********************************************************************** 4D Internet Users Group (4D iNUG) Archive: http://lists.4d.com/archives.html Options: https://lists.4d.com/mailman/options/4d_tech Unsub: mailto:4d_tech-unsubscr...@lists.4d.com **********************************************************************
