Peter,

I haven't done any upgrades yet either, but I have read every message on this 
forum, and engaged in quite a few private discussions. And that's the reason I 
haven't done any upgrades yet. I don't have to put my hand in the fire if 
everyone who has tried it is saying that the fire is hot.

Go back and read the traffic on this list. My take is that the only ones who 
have gone live with their v11 apps and not suffered major pain are those who 
started over from scratch, like Bill, my old friend from Guam days. Only one 
developer with a converted app responded positively to the appeal for 
real-world v11 experiences, and he qualified his response by saying that his 
Foundation app, on the other hand, is giving him major headaches.

What would I like 4D to have done differently? GRADUALLY introduced all those 
new features, over a 3-5 year period. Spend more time and resources on 
compatibility issues, recognizing that customers don't have unlimited time and 
money to flush out bugs and strange behaviors. Don't change the way things work 
for everyone, to fix a problem that may have been experienced by a very few.

The reason I am speaking out is because no one else is. Everyone who is trying 
to use v11 is so focused on putting out individual fires, that they don't see 
that the entire forest is smoldering. Back in the "old days," there were many 
developers who would publicly hold 4D Inc. Accountable, but apparently those 
days are long gone. 

It's a shame, though, because 4D as a product benefitted from those lively 
discussions. Changes were made because of public complaints, and we all 
benefitted. When I was in management at ACI US (now 4D Inc), we always knew 
that some customers were going to "hold our feet to the fire" when we made bad 
decisions or put out buggy versions.

Now, evertone seems afraid to say publicy what some are saying to me privately: 
"this upgrade has been a disaster."

If no one tells 4D that something is wrong, thsy are justified in thinking that 
everything is OK. So if things are not OK, it is our DUTY and our OBLIGATION to 
tell them - publicly and privately.

And that's MY $0.02.

Walt 
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Jakobsson <[email protected]>

Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2009 04:21:14 
To: <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [Active4d-dev] VISTA and v11: A CAUTIONARY TALE



On 19 Feb 2009, at 02:00, Walt Nelson wrote:

> virtually every major program
> running in 4D will break when it is upgraded to v11

Hi Walt

 From what I've seen of v11 so far, it looks like less pain to  
upgrade than, say, the move from 6.7 to 2003/4 since those had a  
brand new OS to support if you were using Mac.

Once the dust settles on v11 I'm firmly expecting to have a  
reasonably smooth upgrade for my 90-workstation 24/7 mission critical  
network apart from having to re-code a few sub-files which have been  
in there since the dawn of man. Also, Active4D of course.

[Will let you know if things don't go according to expectations -:) ]

Just wondering what in particular you would have had 4D do  
differently ? They are usually pretty good at preserving behavior via  
the compatibility checkbox approach. They had to support unicode to  
not go out of business. Same for SQL and X-LIFF. The native DB  
language (and behavior) is preserved. Legacy support for Ascii and  
resources is preserved.

Feel free to consider my comments naive as I haven't embarked on a  
single upgrade yet, so your the one with the experience on that front  
and I'll gladly take any advice going.

As for Active 4D, I've so far been provided with a great product for  
not much money by a 1-man operation so I don't feel in a position to  
make any demands there.  I've told my customer Mar-Dec 2010 for  
Active 4D v11 and I'm amazed at the progress Aparajita has already  
made according to his last report considering he was looking for work  
just a few weeks ago.

Think we'll just sit it out with 2004 for now and see how things go.

Regards

Peter

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