On Fri, 11 Mar 2005 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
...I echo Jim's remark--it is not so simple...
However, if you distill the soup down to the essential ingredients, standards
making is a market management process at the end of the day. A market can be just one seller and one buyer, but that degenerate case isn't very interesting.
of cases in point on that.
Standards making can be done outside of the 'market place'. There are plenty
Even so, I believe what is motivating this discussion here is intimately
bound to a market of traders. All the esoteric rationale being offered here is secondary to the fundamental reality that controlling the marketplace drives (finances) standards makers. Even the open software movement with all its trappings is a market control strategy.
market by limiting threats to the embryonic MUMPS language.
MUMPS is an ANSI X11 standard, NOT X3, entirely as a tactic to control the
Vendor participation in the MDC was at its peak when the VENDORS were highly
motivated to control the marketplace. As their interest in that passed, then those vendors withdrew from active participation, and sent in their second tier representatives. The MDC subsequently bogged down and its efficiency declined dramatically.
Revival of the MDC is not a possibility. The maintaining conditions for
that activity have vanished, and can't be reinstated. (If you can, call Alan Greenspan. He needs your assistance.)
I completely disagree with this statement as it reflects only the poisition of the Supplier who wishes to dictate to the Customer what he can acquire. As Bhaskar stated earlier the market is a two way street: if the Supplier has useful and attractive products and the customer recognizes the value to what he/she is trying to do then the products will be sold, if not the Supplier holds the bag. It is up to the Customer to state clear targets of what will be bought and this will control what is sold. Products that have good common conventions (standards) that give the customer flexibility in the use of the product will sell, those that dont - wont. So it is axiomatic that the both parties get on a common wavelength an get common conventions that are good targets - thats what the MDC is (and has always been about) and both parties have benefitted.. Those Suppliers who feel they have the world by the gonads will have to learn the hard way - but most are smarter than that and I think that the M Community is smarter than most. The common convention dialog neednt be long, complicated or expensive - especially now but two way dialog is essential. The Vista Community dearly needs a solid technologic platform that has the capabilities needed to provide the system behavior needed by healthcare professionals and I believe that it will work to get the needed common conventions (whether Open Source or current market) and reward those Supplier who make the effort for the needed dialog. One observation about Homo Sapiens' basic sins over the 100K years that it has been on the planet: Arrogance, Self Indulgence, Rapacity, Ignorance and Hypocracy have caused it immeasurable grief and are highly active in this issue. The key is joint common effort that results in common benefits -ignore that and read the consequenmces in the newspapers. To benefit healthcare via the work of the VistA Community we must go to work and not take for granted that the work of any one Supplier or Acquirer will produce nirvana. I look forward to a vigorous discussion of this reality during the upcoming meeting.
If a new marketplace is identified, one with economic features that will
attract a lot of flies, the a new form of market control--which may be called standards making--could emerge.
That is clearly Citadel mentality based on arrogance and it wont work and oesnt represent the historic voluntary consensus standards posture of the US. It didnt work in history (either Mycenea or Troy) and it wont now.
I don't see this present discussion developing clear and compelling
descriptions of that marketplace.
On the contrary, this forum and that of the Boston meeting are ideal for refuting both the 1990s Decade of Denial and the current Decade of Refusal that has led to the disestablishement of valuable activities for "Instant Gratification" in a variety of perspectives. This discussion is to refute that provincial view.
I believe that this is a vital first step. Making this a mandatory and persistent agenda item on all future meetings and discussions can do wonders for advancing the interests of all who care about our industry.
Yes, a clear statement of the expected benefits from the common conventions effort is clealry needed. The VistA and M Communities clealry need to recognize the role of M as the technologic platform for the VistA architetcure and the benefits of of that platform for the target healthcare professional disciplines. That does not rule out other technologic contributions but rather obligates the two communities to also recognize the contributions of other technologies and how the M platform technology will enable consiustent uses invarious enterprise information architectures. That means the communities developing the global perpsective of an "enterprise view" rather than a "pigeonhole mentality" of the technology. That will clearly be the challenge.
I believe that this is what folks need to know, even if it may not be what they want to hear.
Arden
Regards,
Richard.
From: Jim Self <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: 2005/03/11 Fri AM 12:41:23 GMT To: <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Hardhats-members] MDC Revival
Nancy wrote:The speed and reliability of M has been proven over and over and there is no reason that VistA or M should be killed by neglect or that the VA should spend whatever countless millions of our tax dollars to migrate VistA to Java just because people are running around telling all of the politicians and anyone who will listen that "M is dead".
I totally agree.
However, the situation is not so simple. VistA clearly needs a new front end and Java is the leading candidate for that so far. Since a Java frontend could be cross platform, it is much to be preferred over the current CPRS.
It appears that the transition away from MUMPS on the backend will occur gradually over a number of years with MUMPS and the VistaLink broker providing the backend database and processing as long as necessary to maintain performance and reliability. That could be a very long time.
It might be long enough to show that a web based solution like M2Web would provide a much simpler and less expensive solution. ;)
An active MDC is proof positive that M isn't dead.
I disagree. The proof and the reason MUMPS is not dead is GT.M/Linux (and other Open Source implementations of MUMPS). With it we have a high performance reliable server-side foundation for running existing MUMPS applications such as VistA and enhancing them and developing new applications with a wide range of technologies using pretty much any additional programming languages desired.
We need it and the sooner the better.
I think it is too soon to revive the MDC - unless you are thinking of an MDC that is radically different in operation and purpose and function than the old one.
The function of the MDC was to limit and channel innovation at the language layer into a common language definition so that vendors of MUMPS could compete only on the basis of price and performance and conformance to the standard, not on enhancements outside the standard and so they could not rely on vendor lock-in where applications were written to the standard.
That all effectively ended when Intersystems acquired their major competitors (DSM, DTM and MSM).
Now that we have Open Source MUMPS to work with, we can easily begin innovating at the language level again if any one cares to take the effort and do the programming. I can think of several new language feaures that could streamline web applications. However, I don't see this as a major priority right now. The language has a mature functionality already and there is plenty to do at the level of hospital information systems and medical records without changing the language underlying them.
--------------------------------------- Jim Self Systems Architect, Lead Developer VMTH Computer Services, UC Davis (http://www.vmth.ucdavis.edu/us/jaself)
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