On Fri, 9 Apr 1999, Steve Patt wrote:
> I'm afraid the point is still being missed. The API's are NOT the
> difficult problem; there are many solutions available. The real problem
> is existing databases using DateType data, which includes the ToDo list,
> the DateBook, and undoubtedly numerous third-party apps. As I noted
> earlier, all of these databases have to be reformatted, and applications
> (or conduits) rewritten to deal with the "old" and "new" formats,
> representing hundreds or thousands of hours of programming time. And no
> change of APIs and simple recompilation is going to solve that problem as
> far as I can see.
if these programs are actually writing the DateType records
directly to file (binary).. they are screwed.
however, storing information correctly will make the databases
huge..
whats required to get this right is:
1) a program that can take a DB and expand the date date
to the correct format
difficulty: 10/10
2) the program that uses the DB needs to ensure they do
not depend on the DateType structure while loading
the data.
difficulty: 1/10
what this means is that if something is not done now - and
all the programs that depend on DateType for storage are
not replaced, then in 2031 we will have palmOS programmers
worth $2000 an hour.. (just like Cobol programmers)..
az.
--
Aaron Ardiri
Lecturer http://www.hig.se/~ardiri/
University-College i G�vle mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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