Jerry and others, I've been hesitent to respond here because I'll just be duplicating material in my blog and from my series of articles in Spectrum Magazine on all of these business and technical topics. I will say that you need to consider that Cache' revenue is almost equally split between new licenses and support fees. For a company with over $200 Million in annual revenue, this means InterSystems has a lot of happy clients and they're constantly getting more. I think it's reasonable to assume that file management is at least "adequate" if not entirely stable, considering the number of sites using this software and the high-profile nature of these sites, including U.S Veteran's Administration, Department of Defense, and critical healthcare and government agencies all over the world. The database hasn't been hit by a GFE-type error in years. It simply works, and doesn't require constant tuning. Our personal familiarity with such things prompts the reasonable questions, but in that world the issues just don't exist.
There are essentially two file structures, the traditional Globals, and the MV files which are Globals too, just structured like dynamic arrays. MV accounts in Cache' have files just like U2, in-line files and DIR files (type 19). There is reportedly no performance lost in working with MV files vs globals. Someone expressed the sentiment that what's old is new, etc. Cache' is built on generations of MUMPS like Universe and Unidata are built on their predecessors. Considering the very similar histories of these products, it will be very difficult for MV people to stick their noses up at Cache' heritage. What should be more important to decision makers than heritage is that the DBMS works very well and is supported by a very large and well organized company. For all of the reasons why people use U2, they should also seek to understand Cache'. I'm not even talking about migrations necessarily. In today's world of SOA (big on the IBM agenda) a U2 site that can integrate with Cache' has a definite advantage over a site that does not, whether via Java, .NET, Web Services, SOA, or by other means. For business reasons anyone integrating with a site (or trading partner or business prospect) that already has Cache' should understand it - and it's just a bonus that MV code works in Cache' itself. HTH TG@ removethisNebula-RnD.com > Jerry wrote: >> Dawn, >> One thing I don't think you mentioned is the file structure. Tell me >> if I'm wrong. The file structure is not like U2 at all. Unlike U2, >> and all other PICK environments, which have separate files for each >> table, Cache has one file that contains all of you tables. The one >> big problem with this file arrangement is that if you get a broken >> table your whole database is broken. You can either scrap the whole >> thing for a backup, which means all of your tables are old or you >> can attempt to fix the broken table which may or may not work. The >> file that contains all of your tables is not dynamically resized >> either. ------- u2-users mailing list u2-users@listserver.u2ug.org To unsubscribe please visit http://listserver.u2ug.org/
