From: price@helios.unl.edu (Chad  Price)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Changes in Advanced Revelation from 1.16 to 3.0
Date: 11 Nov 1992 14:44:35 GMT
Organization: University of Nebraska--Lincoln	
NNTP-Posting-Host: helios.unl.edu

dtodd@titan.ucc.umass.edu (David M. Todd) writes:

>Mike Stramba asked me the following in response to my posting
>mentioning that I had just upgraded from Revelation 1.16 to 3.0.  I
>thought I'd post my response on Comp.databases to see if others have
>any comments:

>POSITIVE:
...
>+ mouse capability (since 2.??, but much more fully implemented in
>3.0)  

Yes .. a very LARGE improvement in functionality.

>PAINT has been improved and works very well with the mouse.

Screens are now much faster and easier to paint. Good improvements here.
...
lots of relevant comments ommited.
...

>- The conversion process is tough, primarily because RTI decided to
>enforce SQL standards for table and column naming (underscores are the
>only "punctuation" that can be used).  The tradeup process carries out
>the most elemental conversions (changing table names and column
>names), but it doesn't touch code (including dictionaries) or VOC
>rows.  ARev tries to translate periods to underscors on the fly, but
>this doesn't work when indexes are involved (e.g. select statements
>using indexed columns).  Quite a few people seem to be saying they are
>eager to use 3.0 on new projects, but not to convert old applications.
>I'm converting an old application and it's been a lot of work but it
>seems worth it.

I loaded 3.0 and let it upgrade on a backup copy and was NOT pleased with the
results. It looks like I basically need to rewrite the application. There is a
huge amount of patching left to do after the upgrade, only partially related to
the new ANSI SQL compliance (which I do approve of BTW).

As with the G2B to ARev conversion, to import files from a previous version
requires that they be in the SYPROG account - the automatic import facility
prints only the account name and not the file name on my screen, so I have to
"fly blind" to get old file into the 3.0 system. 

For important applications, I expect I will perform a "Tradeup" and
incrmentally import the Release G2B and ARev 2.12 stuff a piece at a time and
convert it that way. Debugging the changes made by the upgrade process seems
much more difficult that doing it myself 1 piece at a time.

My impression of why the upgrade is so involved/convoluted is that many of the
existing table names were changed in the system tables; therefore, those of us
who made use of such knowledge to get adaquate performance from applications
rather than just using paint (etc) are somehat penalized. The ANSI compience
and necessary dictinoary conversions are also a factor. Other changes which
(IMHO) were unnecessary were also made: the system defaults to "source" and
"object" tables for Basic program source and object code. While this separation
is a good idea, changing a convention which has been in place for nearly 10
years is going to cause a lot of inconvenience. It seems to me that retaining
the "BP" table as the source code repository would have been better, and simply
use the object table to hold the object code. For production and "for-sale"
systems that do not include source code, this separatin has already been a
necessity, so its not really new. I just see no reason to change the name(s).

In looking at the 30 pages of instructions for conversion, I get the feeling
that they left a LOT of bugs in the conversion process in their haste to get it
out the door, and are going to rely on hand conversion of much that should be
automated. 

Overall rating: 3.0 is a better product, but the conversion process (programs
and hand-conversion) it terrible!

--
chad
price@helios.unl.edu
cprice@molecular.unmc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.databases