I agree with his assessment for the most part but had some comments
to add as well.
At 04:46 PM 3/20/2006, Dave Taylor wrote:
We were under the impression IBM had "conversion" utilities available that
would mostly convert D3 style dictionaries to UD style dictionaries; thus
mitigating the one advantage UV had over UD.
There were utilities that were provided, documented and supported by
"UniData" (when they were UniData the company) at one time. They are
no longer ever mentioned and most people do not even know they ever
existed. They are extremely valuable for converting the dictionaries.
I played with UV for about three months and pretty much validated that D3
doesn't run like D3 on UV. Our application needed a lot of work to make it
run. What this means is that any (and I mean ANY) use of newer D3
functionality makes conversion more difficult. The application we're
converting does have some of this functionality.
Often true. Straight Pick code converts over nicely. When you get
into trouble is when you start using the new functionality offered by
databases (was not part of original Pick) or you hired those clever
consultants who knew how to get Pick to do things that are not documented. :^)
1) Backup utility. UD has no backup utility. As a result it could not
restore data reliably.
That is true. You must use native OS or 3rd party backup
software. Often not an issue. Just make sure files are not being
updated while backing them up. Most sites are using mirrorred
snapshots to make a static backup nowadays. Because the backups are
done at file level and not the record level, they will go much faster as well.
2) Limited U2 resources. The VAR we worked with has limited technical
resources for UniData. We've had to pretty much do this ourselves. IBM has
no interest in our conversion from D3 and there seems to be very limited
resources available for assistance.
There are other VAR's with the experience to do migrations as well as
provide on going support behind them.
I can think of at least one. :-)
3) Q-File facility. UniData doesn't have a comparable function. Users of
UD, and the engineers, don't seem to have a clue of it's benefits and have
not incorporated this into UD.
Someone already posted to this. UD has the ability to emulate
QPointers in a general sense.
4) Pick compatibility. UniData doesn't seem to have moved forward in 20
years with their Pick syntax. They have, however, incorporated the '-' in
the usual verbs (CREATE-FILE works as well as CREATE.FILE). Many commands
just fail instead of working in a default state.
That is true to some extent. Most of the Pick compatibility issues
have been added years ago. Now the product focus is not in
conversions but in bringing current (and new) customers into newer
technology and making the data more open to other products. For the
most part, in UD, the major hurdle will be the dictionary
conversion. But once that is done, its done. You just then have the
training issue to create new dicts going forward.
Hope this is at all interesting.
Yes it was. Keep in mind though that every site is going to be
different. Most of the issues encountered are going to be strictly
unique to the applications. Once worked around though you never have
to really deal with it again. (Unless you decided to migrate to
another database)
Doug Miller [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Manager of Technical Services
Strategy 7 Dallas TX
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