I'd honestly say that the approach to querying data out of M and using
it with someone's "bag of tricks" is the #1 way to gain adoption.
Taking a page out of Microsoft's hand book - if you can get developers
to use your wares (regardless of whether it's the best available) -
you'll gain momentum.
We have about 6 or so developers here and none of them (besides me) can
use M, FM, or anything in VistA. Not saying they couldn't learn, but
these are developers doing Java and Oracle for 5+ years - it's easier to
hand them a SQL statement and an IDE (.NET, VB6, C, InterDev,
Dreamweaver, etc) to code Web or thick apps (like CPRS). They can apply
traditional OOP, libraries/frameworks, unit testing, etc. I don't think
I can explain encapsulation, inheritance, unit testing, or libraries
easily ... (if you know what I mean).
But that's different to everyone on this list. I'm sure Jim and Greg
have routines for hashing strings, one-way encryption, easy file system
access, etc. I don't know these and instead use .NET for its framework
to provide these.
So for instance, if you want to hash the string plaintext into MD5:
HashAlgorithm cs = CryptoConfig.CreateFromName("MD5");
byte[] cb = cs.ComputeHash(ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetBytes(plainText));
Want that in Base64?
string s64 = Convert.ToBase64String(cb);
I have similar functions for VB6 but I had to write the libraries that
make it work. So it really is your "skillset" and your "bag of tricks"
but the more flexible you are to allow external tools to work, the more
likely a system will be adopted.
Then there are web services... but that's another thread... :)
/David.
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Greg
Woodhouse
Sent: Wednesday, December 22, 2004 12:52 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Hardhats-members] modern day programming (was:
Intersystems)
I'm sure that's a big part of it. Though every product out there seems
to have its own flavor of SQL, using a relational database does offer a
common model, and I suppose knowledge of MySQL (say), is more
"transferable" to Oracle than it is to Fileman -- though, in fact, I
think Fileman is much more relational than people often realize. It is
often argued that relational database technology has a stronger
theoretical background than Fileman, but I'm not impressed by this
argument. I may be true that relational technology is an improvement
over network and hierarchical databases here, but that's not Fileman.
It is often argued that support for ad hoc queries is a significant
advantage of an RDBMS over Fileman, but consider what you can do with
"Search" option and relational navigation. I would also point out that
indexes are very much a fact of life using relational products: if a
file design favors certain potential queries over others, so does RDBMS
design. Perhaps the most cogent argument I've heard is that Fileman is
built around pointers, which are not part of the relational model.
Maybe so, but one-to-one relationships are hardly unique to Fileman,
and foreign keys referencing candidate keys other than the primary key
are the exception rather than the rule (and it is not clear to me
whether this is really even all that useful). Beyond that, even in an
RDBMS you will generally end up indexing fields you frequently use as
the basis of joins. The real difference here is that multiple-valued
pointers ultimately make use of a subfile, but that subfile is in an
optional one-to-one relationship with the referenced file, so you may
as well think of it as a nullable foreign key. When you get right down
to it, even this seems to reduce to terminology (and a little
bookkeeping), after all.
--- "Nancy E. Anthracite" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't the reason for so much interest
> in SQL
> that so many people in the work force are trained to make queries
> using SQL?
> Isn't the issue writing an interface that allows SQL queries of a
> Mumps
> database. Isn't that what that company in Massachusetts
> ( http://mde.srs-inc.com/aboutmde.html) and Cache does that people
> want?
>
=====
A practical man is a man who practices the errors of his forefathers.
--Benjamin Disraeli
====
Greg Woodhouse
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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