[Info-vax] Roadmap

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2019-01-07 19:28:22 +0000, Dave Froble said:

> On 1/7/2019 1:19 PM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>> 
>> That's heading closer to object storage.  On OpenVMS, a descriptor 
>> might be chosen, given the lack of support for objects.
> 
> Thank you for that idea.  It's one I didn't think of.
> 
> Regardless, it doesn't seem to solve the issue of binary data on 
> storage devices.  Unless the descriptor was included in the storage.

The OpenVMS approach classically involved CDD/Repository, though 
CDD/Repository is not going to be a particularly inviting approach for 
the current world, and that for various reasons.
The non-OpenVMS approach tends to be embedding the declaration into the 
data, akin to what—for instance—SQLite implements.
Or yes, tagging the data in some manner, either with each record or 
within the fields within a file, with the field definitions either 
embedded or stored separately.

> I'm not sure how much of a problem this is.  For me, there isn't much, 
> (but that's not none), storage of real numbers.  But for when there is, 
> I don't see any easy solutions.  By now, somebody somewhere has written 
> new code to look at archived binary data, and gotten erroneous data.   
> Then the question becomes, do they even know they are working with 
> bogus data?

Some don't ever access the archives.  Some do.  Some notice.  Some 
don't.  Some believe what the computer tells them.  Same as usual.

> No easy solutions, and I'm not sure there are even hard solutions for 
> data that is already stored.

Archive conversions are the usual approach, though I'd presently prefer 
to go to yaml, json or ilk, and let the folks analyzing those files use 
those formats and not try to deal with floating point formats and 
binary data storage.  Flag the current file format with a header too, 
so that future data conversions and future imports have something to 
work with.

I don't prefer to use floating point for monetary values, as that 
approach gets... ugly.  Particularly around discounts, taxes, 
commissions and other percentages.  Integers or BCD are preferred.  Or 
string numerics and string math, as I used in DEC BASIC an aeon or 
three ago, when choices were limited and the finances involved exceeded 
the then-current integer range.

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