At 9/13/2006 04:41 PM, MZelden wrote:
I'm still not clear on the advatage SMP/E gives to you or your
customers over a full IEBCOPY type replacement at each cumlative
maintenance level. The only thing I can see for sure is that it
would make auditors happy and shops that require SMP/E installed products.
Actually, yes. That was one of the reasons why I switched over to
SMP/E packaging. (As I said in an earlier post, I don't even like the stuff!)
But beyond that, I find the main advantage is it makes both the
packaging and the distribution of maintenance drop-dead easy!
- The maintenance file is small, rarely growing to as much
as one megabyte.
- So when distributed over the Internet, it's a very small
download.
- A full product replacement would run to some 20 or 30
megabytes (ok for FTP, I guess, but much too big for
email).
SMP is very good at automating the precise targeting of maintenance
to the elements that need changing. To achieve the same level of
manual-work-relief, but without SMP, I would have to require the
customer to do a full product download and replacement. That strikes
me as being much harder.
Or for more precise targeting, I would have to come up with and
maintain a custom job stream that (a) would change frequently over
the life cycle of a product release and (b) would require local
customization every time I changed it. That just seems to me to be an
unnecessary hassle for the both of us.
BTW: Another advantage of cumulative packaging (vs. incremental
packaging): It keeps the customer from picking/choosing which
maintenance to apply and which to skip. Every time the SYSPROG
decides to download/apply new maintenance, his only choice is to
download the most recent maintenance file.
This contributes to a greater uniformity from one customer to the
next, and that is a benefit to me (and ultimately, therefore, to the
customer) when I have to shoot a new problem.
Of course, this also requires that my maintenance be perfect. I won't
claim that I've succeeded on this point, but I will claim that I have
come pretty darn close. In any case, if you don't trust the
maintenance, then how can you trust the underlying product? It seems
to me that it's all the same leap of faith.
Dave Cole REPLY TO: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cole Software WEB PAGE: http://www.xdc.com
736 Fox Hollow Road VOICE: 540-456-8536
Afton, VA 22920 FAX: 540-456-6658
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