[Info-vax] FMS and Datatrieve

[Keith Cayemberg]

On May 20, 8:50 pm, abrsvc <dansabrservi... at yahoo.com> wrote:
> On May 20, 2:34 pm, Johnny Billquist <b... at softjar.se> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On 2011-05-20 11.32, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>
> > > On 2011-05-20 09.39, JF Mezei wrote:
> > >> FMS (and ALLIN1) are in in maintenance mode.
>
> > >> FMS was to be EOLed at the VAX-Alpha transition, but the announcement
> > >> that ALLIN1 was to be ported to Alpha forced Digital to port to FMS too,
> > >> but it has been in maintenance mode since. There was one new release and
> > >> a couple of patches I think since the early 1990s.
>
> > > Wasn't FMS supposed to be replaced by a new product, that did what FMS
> > > do, and more? I can't remember the name of it...
>
> > Wasn't it DECforms?
>
> >         Johnny
>
> IIRC DecForms was intended to replace both FMS and TDMS and
> consolidated the functions of both (sort of...)
>
> Dan

Yes, I'm aware of DECforms as the follow-on product to FMS. I
programmed a heating curves archive and analysis application for sheet
steel annealing furnaces in 1991 using it. I'm less familiar with TDMS
but I believe DECforms was also intended to be a follow-on product for
TDMS.

However, in what sense is DECforms or TDMS a replacement for FMS, when
your company has developed mission-critical CIM applications with over
4 million lines of FMS integrated code?  DECforms and TDMS are not
upward code-compatible with FMS, and to recode such important super-
stable applications just to have different look is a rather weak
justification to interrupt their maturity path.

The methodical cultivation of software that has matured for it's
purpose is suppose to be one of the major and desired goals of the IT
industry. It may drive less sales than always chasing the latest sexy
thing, but it is rationally more customer friendly to support the
customer to stay with your matured products for as long a period as
possible. This is doubly important for products that are part of your
customer's software platform definition such as programming tools.

Cheers!

Keith Cayemberg


Cheers!