gawk vs sql

Date: Sat, 14 Aug 1999 16:48:09 -0700 (PDT)
From: Mica Currie <aa146@valleynet.bc.ca>
To: potter@chebucto.ns.ca
cc: csuite-dev@chebucto.ns.ca
Precedence: bulk
Return-Path: <csuite-dev-mml-owner@chebucto.ns.ca>

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> Many of the people pushing the notion of sql for this application have missed 
> the picture.... namedb is actually a _very_ elegant solution... it allows a 
> users complete history to be stored and accessed in very easy and 
> straightforward fashion.
> 
> Storing information is simplicity itself, retrieving the current value for 
> a data set is very straightforward... and the text format lends itself to 
> extending the data structures and debugging routines... of all the people 
> arguing against it Michael Smith is probably the only one who's taken the time 
> to figure it out. 
> 
> david potter
> 

I think you have hit the nail exactly on the head... Most people haven't
taken the time to figure it out.. mostly because there are a lot of us who
don't enjoy tracing through csuites "elegant solutions" Perhaps I'd feel
differently if the system was documented well so that when things went
wrong you could at least find out what something inside the code is
supposed to do, what it relys on and what assumptions it makes. 

As for easy to figure out what the current settings or data is in
csuite... I'll point you to csuites love of variable redefinitions...
Instead of replacing values during an automated configuration sequence it
appends them to the end of the file or overiding that setting somewhere
else... 

Two cases are brought to mind specifically in the vars file... The first
involved a poor pathname which resulted from a configuration change...
When the file was hand edited The first occurance of the variable was
altered instead of the last... Because it made no sense to have multiple
definitions of the same static variable no further configuration was
done... Csuite of course completley ignored this first variable in favor
of the final definition further on down the file... Csuite is riddled with
this sort of counter intuitive programming style. 

The second instance is the CS_GROUP_ID and CS_GID variables (this is from
memory so the exact variables may be wrong) Csuite in all it's wisdom uses
multiple variables to hold the same information. Scripts use a mixture of
the variables so they appear randomly intermixed even within the same
script.

debugging these sorts of things where a configuration file looks valid but
because it does not provide the double definitions necessary for csuite to
wander through and get its job done.

Any solution is only as good as the documentation available to support it.
Csuite as it stands has the documentation inside the heads of those who
work with it on a daily basis... 

ttyl... Mica



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