Release Schedules and Feedback on Fixes

[Charles Yeomans]

On Dec 11, 2006, at 12:56 PM, Lynn Fredricks wrote:

>> So why this post? To ask that you please examine the
>> corrupted databases that our uses can send to us to see if
>> you can find a pattern, or at least a subset of  problem
>> areas (e.g. with VarChar fields, which seem to me to be the
>> source of a lot of issues)? I can probably send you a dozen
>> reported by my users within a week.
>
> I want to reiterate Ruslan's comments to remind everyone that we  
> have an
> engineering team that looks at issues/crash logs/sample dbs and  
> that they
> are there to test, confirm and ultimately fix the problem. If  
> you've been
> with us for a while, you know that once we have enough information,  
> we fix
> the problem. Databases are infrastructure and an infrastructure  
> must be
> solid. We don't work on a 90 day cycle - we work on a NOW cycle :-)
>
> At the same time - do not delay in providing feedback/logs/test dbs.
>
> As you may know, we've been filling in some features that were  
> promised in
> the 2.x product lifecycle, like UTF-8 support.  Our original plan  
> was finish
> "feature fill" with 2.5, however we've decided to make it 2.6. 2.6
> represents the solid base which is Valentina 2 - a transition that, if
> you've been with us since Valentina 1.x has been a very long road  
> indeed
> (but given all the shipping apps out there based around Valentina  
> 2.x, not a
> bad one at all!).
>
> With a strong 2.6 base, we begin longer term planning along with  
> incremental
> fixes. There isnt wholesale replacement of technology - we did that  
> already
> with the transition from Valentina 1.x to Valentina 2.x.
>
> What this means is - if you have remained quiet about a pet issue  
> or havent
> sent in a sample db for an issue you filed weeks ago - now is the  
> time to do
> it, before we release 2.6. Our goal is to set our engineers working  
> to solve
> _all_ outstanding issues while the rest of us are enjoying our cups of
> eggnog :-)

Unfortunately, my current problems are with moving my databases from  
V4Rb 2.2 to 2.5.  I've blown hours and hours and hours on this, and I  
may have gotten one database moved. Now that I am attempting the  
second database, I'm finding new problems. For example,  
VDatabase.Dump dumps empty date fields as '00/00/2000'.  V4Rb 2.5  
aborts LoadDump with an error, complaining of invalid date values.   
Now, I can use BBEdit to edit my 50 mb xml file to remove those  
fields.  Then the import fails again because of invalid XML. I've  
read the XML and can't find the problem.  I think I'll get it done  
eventually, though I may have to write my own code to get the data  
moved, as I had to do to move from 1.x to 2.x.  If I have to do this  
a third time, it will be to a new database.

It's great that most problems get fixed so quickly, once identified.   
But as it stands right now, I agree with Jon.  Valentina has become  
unreliable, especially for client-server stuff.  Much of that  
functionality was broken in earlier versions, which made it very  
difficult to do any sort of database maintenance and backup.  We need  
the features claimed to exist now to work correctly, and we need  
reliable storage.

Charles Yeomans