Culture Shock

[Bill Farrell]

I've just started working for Solstas Lab Partners in High Point. Up
until now I've been working with Cache 2011/2012. SLP uses a pretty
antique version of Cache (Version 4). Very little of what I'm used to
for working with CSP exists in Cache 4, but it does have CSP of a
sort.

Is there a group for antique versions of Cache; hopefully one where
folks have been working with CSP?

I'm sticking with the MV group even though I'm not using MV during my
workday (it doesn't even exist on Cache 4).

Is there even any formal support for Cache 4? The earliest docs I can
find on the InterSystems site is for version 5.

Thanks. Any ideas at all will be welcome.

Bill

[Dawn Wolthuis]

There is the "standard" group for Cache' at
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/intersystems-public-cache

There is also a mumps group that I'm subscribed to somewhere, but I
would have to find it.

Enjoy the new job! --dawn

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--
Dawn M. Wolthuis

Take and give some delight today

[Bill Farrell]

Awesome, Dawn; thanks! I've also posted to the CSP group (I had to switch
to the new format in order to see my groups).

I just joined the "standard" group. I suspect I'll be hanging there a good
bit too. I haven't written MUMPS in ages, but like any good thing, it all
comes back but a tablespoon.

So far I really like being at Solstas. What a great group of people;
friendly, helpful, very easygoing. It was worth the long wait to continue
working with Cache' in any form.

B

[Greg Baryza]

Bill;

Cache 4 pre-dates me.  I arrived in 2002.  DocBook was introduced in Cache 5 along with sources marked up in XML.  Prior to that, the docs were done in FrameMaker and printed on paper. 

I seem to recall that order fulfillment got rid of the last remaining paper copies when cleaning out one of the corporate storage rooms in the building basement years ago.

I have the odd volume of pre-5, but only by chance.  Just after I arrived, they arranged the 4th floor and moved developers around.  Many took that opportunity to throw out old manuals.  As a newbie, I took the opportunity to go dumpster-diving.

We did make a legacy documentation archive around 2005 with what FrameMaker files were still around after various disk failures and so on.  It's very scattered, but you can look at

http://www.intersystems.com/priordocexcerpts/

However, as the introductory comments state, if what you want is not there, we no longer have it.

The question that no one has asked is, "How do they train new developers at Solstas?"  Unless they hire only old Mumps/M/Cache developers who bring their own manuals, they must have faced this issue before in the last decade-plus years.  How did they solve it?

<G>

At 01:03 PM 3/21/2012, Bill Farrell wrote:

Awesome, Dawn;  thanks!  I've also posted to the CSP group (I had to switch
to the new format in order to see my groups).

I just joined the "standard" group.  I suspect I'll be hanging there a good
bit too. I haven't written MUMPS in ages, but like any good thing, it all
comes back but a tablespoon.

So far I really like being at Solstas.  What a great group of people;
friendly, helpful, very easygoing.  It was worth the long wait to continue
working with Cache' in any form.

B



-----Original Message-----
From: intersy...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:intersy...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Dawn Wolthuis
Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2012 12:00 PM
To: intersy...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [InterSystems-MV] Culture Shock

[Bill Farrell]

Hi Greg,

 

Thanks for digging around.  I see I’m not the only one who dumpster-dives for ancient writs and manuscripts.  I did manage to find PDF’s of Release 5 and made a bookmark so I can get back at them. 

 

Lucky me, I’ve found I can handle the MUMPS part of the job.  CSP is TOTALLY different between Cache 4 and Cache 5 since 5 seems to introduce “real” classes you can get at.  (Is release 4 even supported at all?)  I ordered a couple of M/M2 manuals and sat around working the examples before I got here to refresh myself.  (It’s only been like 20 years since I’ve coded in MUMPS.)  I found a lovely M2 shell for Ubuntu and loaded that on my desktop at home.    I told Rich I’d never code in M

 

S ^Good=”free”_” “_”works on linux” ; Schweet!  Primitive, but schweet.

 

Solstas is reasonably picky about who they hire.  I didn’t have to take a full-on MIIS/TET test but I did have to show some examples.  The M coders here are pretty sharp and have been coding in M since The Great Flood it would seem.  I have lots of support around me if memory fails me on a language structure or command.  So far, I’m ok.  When I run into a problem, it’s because I’m thinking COS and not MUMPS (all whilst missing the power of MV).

 

I figured out what the cause of my error was yesterday.  It seems that Solstas (wisely) has PC workstation permissions locked down.  I managed to get “local admin” permissions yesterday, but I still need “full control” on the folders in which Cache lives locally. (I’m one of the few who has a full server instance of Cache 4 on my workstation.)  The error I was getting is due to the fact that Studio cannot save a file to the CSP subfolder hence cannot compile.  I hope fixing the permissions and reinstalling C4.1.6 will fix this.

 

I asked our DBA to reinstall Cache 4 on my workstation and set the permissions so I can save and compile.  (I managed to kill it, not being used to NOT being the admin and lord of all.)  The procedure is MUCH different to say, 2007 and beyond (releases I’ve worked on up until now).  Still, it’s not bad;  just different.  I do miss having MV, I’ll admit.  (What’s the first release where we get to MV?  I’ll lobby for that as an upgrade goal.)

 

The financial package we support is also straight M, no magic.  My boss is hoping we can get to Cache 5 soon so we can have some notion of object-oriented programming.  I’ll be helping the M coders with that transition (there are only two of us here who have written OOP on Cache).  I keep lobbying for something like Cache 2007 at least, but the problem lies with Sunquest who so far is only supporting up to release 5 IIRC.  Unfortunately, the third-party vendor is preventing the financial group from going on to “normal” releases.  I have no idea what the holdup may be on their end.

 

I’m still trying to develop my own small-farm management package in the evenings and weekends.  That will certainly remain MV.  I’ve asked for license pricing, but the key players in making that determination are busy at conference.  I’m not in a great hurry at the moment since I have real farm chores to do, getting crops in the ground, taking cuttings and propagating, tilling, all that fun stuff it takes to actually have a farm.  I’ve got at least a couple/three weeks before I can get back to developing my own app in CacheMV.  (I’m writing documentation as I go.)

 

I did post in the “regular” Cache Googlygroup and the CSP Googlygroup.  No answers there, but I’m all hooked up in case someone does get back to me.  Creating, compiling, and deploying a CSP is quite a bit different to that which I’m used to.  Just normal bumps in the road when one goes from one job to another.  (I have a real job again, YAY!)

 

Thanks,

B

[Greg Baryza]

Bill:

Good luck in your new job.  To answer the question that seems to be remaining:

Officially, InterSystems supports only the currently available release, and the previous release.  At the time of this writing, that is 2012.1 (current) and 2011.1 (previous).  And "support" means issue regular maintenance releases from development.

The Worldwide Support Organization does attempt to assist customers running on earlier releases not covered by the preceding policy when they can.   However, there is no guarantee that the problem reported can be reasonably fixed in that environment.  The older the release, the more likely that the "fix" will be a recommendation to upgrade to a newer version.

The last maintenance release for Cache 4 that I know of was 4.1.16 and it was done in late 2003.

<G>

At 10:51 AM 3/22/2012, Bill Farrell wrote:

Hi Greg,

 

Thanks for digging around.  I see Im not the only one who dumpster-dives for ancient writs and manuscripts.  I did manage to find PDFs of Release 5 and made a bookmark so I can get back at them. 

 

Lucky me, Ive found I can handle the MUMPS part of the job.  CSP is TOTALLY different between Cache 4 and Cache 5 since 5 seems to introduce realclasses you can get at.  (Is release 4 even supported at all?)  I ordered a couple of M/M2 manuals and sat around working the examples before I got here to refresh myself.  (Its only been like 20 years since Ive coded in MUMPS.)  I found a lovely M2 shell for Ubuntu and loaded that on my desktop at home.    I told Rich Id never code in M

 

S ^Good=free__works on linux; Schweet!  Primitive, but schweet.

 

Solstas is reasonably picky about who they hire.  I didnt have to take a full-on MIIS/TET test but I did have to show some examples.  The M coders here are pretty sharp and have been coding in M since The Great Flood it would seem.  I have lots of support around me if memory fails me on a language structure or command.  So far, Im ok.  When I run into a problem, its because Im thinking COS and not MUMPS (all whilst missing the power of MV).

 

I figured out what the cause of my error was yesterday.  It seems that Solstas (wisely) has PC workstation permissions locked down.  I managed to get local adminpermissions yesterday, but I still need full controlon the folders in which Cache lives locally. (Im one of the few who has a full server instance of Cache 4 on my workstation.)  The error I was getting is due to the fact that Studio cannot save a file to the CSP subfolder hence cannot compile.  I hope fixing the permissions and reinstalling C4.1.6 will fix this.

 

I asked our DBA to reinstall Cache 4 on my workstation and set the permissions so I can save and compile.  (I managed to kill it, not being used to NOT being the admin and lord of all.)  The procedure is MUCH different to say, 2007 and beyond (releases Ive worked on up until now).  Still, its not bad;  just different.  I do miss having MV, Ill admit.  (Whats the first release where we get to MV?  Ill lobby for that as an upgrade goal.)

 

The financial package we support is also straight M, no magic.  My boss is hoping we can get to Cache 5 soon so we can have some notion of object-oriented programming.  Ill be helping the M coders with that transition (there are only two of us here who have written OOP on Cache).  I keep lobbying for something like Cache 2007 at least, but the problem lies with Sunquest who so far is only supporting up to release 5 IIRC.  Unfortunately, the third-party vendor is preventing the financial group from going on to normalreleases.  I have no idea what the holdup may be on their end.

 

Im still trying to develop my own small-farm management package in the evenings and weekends.  That will certainly remain MV.  Ive asked for license pricing, but the key players in making that determination are busy at conference.  Im not in a great hurry at the moment since I have real farm chores to do, getting crops in the ground, taking cuttings and propagating, tilling, all that fun stuff it takes to actually have a farm.  Ive got at least a couple/three weeks before I can get back to developing my own app in CacheMV.  (Im writing documentation as I go.)

 

I did post in the regularCache Googlygroup and the CSP Googlygroup.  No answers there, but Im all hooked up in case someone does get back to me.  Creating, compiling, and deploying a CSP is quite a bit different to that which Im used to.  Just normal bumps in the road when one goes from one job to another.  (I have a real job again, YAY!)

 

Thanks,

B

 

 

 

From: intersy...@googlegroups.com [mailto:intersy...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Greg Baryza
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2012 8:24 AM
To: intersy...@googlegroups.com; intersy...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: [InterSystems-MV] Culture Shock

 

[Dawn Wolthuis]

A little note about releases. I like a vendor that does what they can
to help customers keep up, rather than lagging behind in releases. I
have noticed, however, that while bootstrapping a new venture I could
spend every waking hour doing upgrades and sys admin. I have no
appetite (nor aptitude) for such sys admin, so this is really a big
issue in getting off the ground. At the point we have a release
installed and have made the changes that are required or that prompted
our adoption of the release, one or two more releases are on the
doorstep. While this might work for a large company, when we get a
release working, it feels like we just bought an iPad and then the
iPad 2 came out.

For what it is worth, I know there are pros and cons to every
deployment approach. I do not know if ISC makes it easy-enough for
their "real customers" (I'm still gearing up) to keep up. I know it
isn't easy for me. Although there are surely downsides to a patching
approach, if there were one big new release to be installed about
every 2 years and patch releases that can be installed without an
applecart-upset (like ad hocs) in between, that would be more ideal
for me. Backward compatibility is a good practice and it is easier to
keep such discipline with patches than brand new releases, I suspect.
Just musing outloud. Cheers! --dawn

[Bill Farrell]

To that I only have to add "I miss ACCOUNT.SAVE", meaning that there's no
easy way to export only files and dicts. It's a no-brainer to export
routines and classes from the Studio (a poor man's save for account-specific
packages but it's fast and easy). Once you have data in a set of MV files
in Cache, you have to make your own export/import procedures if you just
want to export DICTs and DATA levels and nothing else. Seems like a serious
oversight to me. I can think of many good reasons to export only DICT/DATA
information (like porting data back from a production machine to a
development machine without having to take the whole cache.dat). There are
many occasions where moving cache.dat is absolutely not an option.
FILE.SAVE and ACCT.RESTORE (with the option for looking for a specific MV
file in a specific account) made such a move fairly simple and routine.

Anybody's else?

[Dawn Wolthuis]

We successfully used accuterm for some file transfers iirc. --dawn

Typed on a mobile keyboard

[Ed Clark]

If you are transfering from cache to cache, you can use the %Library.Global.Export() and Import() methods to dump the globals for a file. There isn't a standard tool to do it, but you could write a wrapper that dumps the globals for a list of files

[Bill Farrell]

Awesome, Ed. That's exactly what my salad needs.

Thanks!

[Greg Baryza]

Dawn:

This is not to change your mind, just to set out out (more or less) the
current thinking. We used to do releases less frequently. One of the
drawbacks from our point of view was the constant temptation to hold the
release for some feature to be complete, or to add some new geegaw. After
all, if it didn't make this boat, the next one won't be for two more
years. For us, it caused havoc with all kinds of processes, quality, and
predictability.

Now we strive to provide two releases a year (and are averaging about one
every 8 months). What goes in the release is pretty much no more than is
ready at the time of the development cutoff, some months before. My own
opinion is that it works better because the product advances more
predictably; there are less moving parts meaning the combinatorial
explosions are much smaller; we get new features into production more
quickly; and we can respond to market demands better. We are also focused
much more on cross-release compatibility and upgrade so you don't have to
take every release.

The release support policy attempts to strike a balance between competing
drives.

Thank you for expressing your opinion here. However, feel free also to
express it to your account team too so it enters the management discussion
channels. We want all our customers to succeed. If we're hindering that
for you, we want to know.

At 10:33 AM 3/22/2012, Dawn Wolthuis wrote:
>A little note about releases. I like a vendor that does what they can
>to help customers keep up, rather than lagging behind in releases. I
>have noticed, however, that while bootstrapping a new venture I could
>spend every waking hour doing upgrades and sys admin. I have no
>appetite (nor aptitude) for such sys admin, so this is really a big
>issue in getting off the ground. At the point we have a release
>installed and have made the changes that are required or that prompted
>our adoption of the release, one or two more releases are on the
>doorstep. While this might work for a large company, when we get a
>release working, it feels like we just bought an iPad and then the
>iPad 2 came out.
>
>For what it is worth, I know there are pros and cons to every
>deployment approach. I do not know if ISC makes it easy-enough for
>their "real customers" (I'm still gearing up) to keep up. I know it
>isn't easy for me. Although there are surely downsides to a patching
>approach, if there were one big new release to be installed about
>every 2 years and patch releases that can be installed without an
>applecart-upset (like ad hocs) in between, that would be more ideal
>for me. Backward compatibility is a good practice and it is easier to
>keep such discipline with patches than brand new releases, I suspect.
>Just musing outloud. Cheers! --dawn
>
>On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 10:15 AM, Greg Baryza <bar...@intersystems.com> wrote:

[Bill Farrell]

Look what I found:

Greg,

AHA!! The 4.1x docs are available online. T’ain’t easy to find, but
I blundered into them.

The head URL for the doc set is at http://docs.intersystems.com/cache41/index.html
.

I have homework to do.

B

[Dawn Wolthuis]

Thanks Greg. I definitely understand the thinking. In theory I
definitely believe in time-boxing ;-) and I do think that is better
than having a set of features that must be added before a release.
That feature set will always expand and it is difficult to get it
done, bug-free and all. Pressing for a release date can be a good
thing.

When it comes to consuming this approach, I am struggling a bit, but
that could be lessened if I rarely heard that I should upgrade. If
anything delivered within the past two years were supported, that
seems fair (not just the last two releases). First for any listeners,
I am really, really pleased with how the product keeps moving forward
with good new features. I will also note that my team is an exception
in that no one is getting paid yet and I suck at sys admin. So, I
suspect that with our small starter application we could spend all of
our project hours just on upgrading to the release that someone
recommends we really should be on and do nothing else to move our
application forward. It reminds me of this morning when I was on the
treadmill and then realized that it is a nice day out. I could be
going somewhere instead of running in place!

Eventually we will have resources, really we will, yup, that's what
will happen. cheers! --dawn