Thomas.
I'm a project manager who is using the most alpha - alpha possible.
Perhaps, I can ask you some general questions about your project to
see if your Project manager's concerns are justified. Then I'll tell
you how I have alleviated mine - to the extent possible.
Does he need to read an arbitrary and untested XLS file sourced from
a client?
If so, then he is concerned that with an alpha there are
unimplemented parts of the format. Since the format is only
documented "completely" by Microsoft, and you have to sign yourself
out of POI development to get it. There is a reasonable cause for
concern.
Does he have control over the format and requirements of the XLS
being generated? Can he accept whatever the limits of the feature set
that there might be?
If yes to these then you should be able to easily persuade him. If
yes to the first and no to the second then you will need to do as
Nick suggests - contribute!
If he is concerned about future arbitrary inputs, and I know I am,
then you must become his expert in POI and make sure that any of
these issues are fixed. You will need to convince him that there is a
community for support. His product development cycle may make it hard
to accept that there may be trouble with an arbitrary file, if you
continue in that path you will need the most complete test set
possible from your product manager.
In the past year I am very happy with what my developer has been able
to accomplish generating both XLS and PPT for our website. He is
contributing the work back to POI, and we have received benefit from
our involvement.
All of those with a vote should vote for this alpha!
Cheers to all POI Developers!
Regards,
Dave
On May 19, 2006, at 5:27 AM, Gascoigne Thomas wrote:
Cheers, easier said than done though. It passes all my initial
tests but
haven't had the go-ahead for full tests yet. I'll keep working on him!
-----Original Message-----
From: Nick Burch [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: 19 May 2006 11:19
To: POI Developers List
Subject: RE: New alpha release
On Fri, 19 May 2006, Gascoigne Thomas wrote:
Does that mean that 3.0 will become a final release or does it go
beta
first?
I'm suggesting 3.0-alpha2
A final release of 3.0 would be great (and save a lot of work) as my
project leader won't let me use it until then.
I think you need to educate your project leader then.
* Does the code work for you?
* Does it pass all of its tests?
* Does it pass all your tests? (You are writing tests of your code
that
uses POI, aren't you?)
If it satisfies all 3 of those, then you're fine to use it. If not,
contribute bug fixes and patches until it does!
Nick
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