[Info-vax] VSI roadmap

[Dave Froble]

On 8/18/2023 10:12 AM, dthi... at gmail.com wrote:
> On Thursday, August 17, 2023 at 7:10:15 PM UTC-4, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 8/17/2023 11:21 AM, Marc Van Dyck wrote:
>>> Arne Vajhøj explained :
>>>> * the CDD replacement
>>>
>>> Any details about this ?
>> The roadmap just says:
>>
>> <quote>
>> * VDD (replacement for CDD)
>> </quote>
>>
>> I don't know anything about VDD.
>>
>> Maybe some VSI people can enlighten us.
>>
>> It could be important for sites still using CDD today.
>>
>> I have not used CDD since late 80's/early 90's and
>> I hated it.
>>
>> Arne
>
> While CDD made multi-language synchronization of record layouts easier ON VMS, it made it difficult when you wanted to move/port code to other platforms, which did not have language compiler constructs for accessing CDD. We moved part of our application suite to Linux to take advantage of some OS features, and needed to extract the record layouts into include files for the Linux compilers. From that point on, we found it easier to instruct our programmers to keep extracted include file directories in synch rather than maintain the VMS-only CDD layouts in combination with the include layouts.
>
> I certainly understand that from VSI's compatibility perspective that they would want it to prevent a lot of customer code rework by having a CDD construct available on x86_64. If VSI is internally creating a new version (VDD) it makes me think that Oracle has already said that they aren't planning to port CDD to x86_64.
>

Ok, water over the dam, under the bridge, and out to sea.

The real problem is that a really bad design was adopted by DEC to make record 
definitions part of the program (code) rather than part of the database.  When 
the record definitions are part of the database, it really doesn't matter what 
language or OS is in use, as long as the database capabilities include 
extraction of the record definitions and access to the data.

So, either there is a central repository of record definitions, such as CDD, or 
a single copy of include files, or, each program might have it's own definitions.

With CDD, at least there is a single place for record definitions, and many are 
stuck with the basic design.  So it is good that VSI is providing such a utility.

Opinion, the whole design still sucks ...

-- 
David Froble                       Tel: 724-529-0450
Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc.      E-Mail: davef at tsoft-inc.com
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