Can We Talk Here? By Tony Gravagno

The Internet defines the information age. It’s a place where we can get data in minutes that might have taken days in the past, if we only knew who to ask. Outside of Web sites where you can hunt for answers to questions, and the more one-to-one medium of e-mail, there are many other places on “The Net” where people freely share information. I’d like to share with you some of these resources available to Pick/MultiValue developers and end users; the places where gurus hang out and newcomers are initiated, where VARs and developers debate and collaborate, and where we find that we are part of more than just amarket, but a real worldwide community. Here are some questions that people have from time to time:

  What tools are available to Web-enable my application?
  What is the proper syntax of this statement?
  Why doesn’t this command work?
  Which product is better, X or Y?

You can call your VAR or DBMS Support department, but you can’t expect them to have the right answer to every question, and they usually don’t tell you to buy a competing product if you need more functionality. An Internet Forum is a place where you can post your questions for anyone to see. Every forum is focused on a specific topic, some more broad in scope than others. Other people visit the forum, see your questions, and decide if they’d like to respond. If you’re lucky, you’ll get responses back from many people with varied experience. Hopefully you will get responses that will help you. Sometimes the answers we see are wrong or just not complete, but someone else will probably come along to set things right. One question may lead to many, or you may be asked for more details about exactly what you’re doing so that a better answer can be provided. This can lead to long exchanges over hours, days, or even weeks. Occasionally discussions will flare, as many people with differing opinions debate on the finer details — for me, this is when the medium is fun and interesting.The important thing to remember is that these are opinions.Granted,some of the people who respond are very knowledgeable and their opinions may count for more; but they are just opinions.Take what’s offered; mix with personal experience and common sense and come to your own — hopefully more informed — conclusion.

A forum is also a place to market one’s self, company, or products. But we wouldn’t walk into a crowded room and start shouting about our personal offering, nor should we do so in a public discussion area on the Net. Genteel inclusion or exclusion of commercial interest is a part of what’s called “Netiquette,” a term unfortunately not heard very often since the Net exploded into common use.We may be typing at a keyboard and not standing in a big room, but our personal demeanor is just as important.The way we present ourselves in forums can have lasting effect on our business relationships. But a forum is also a place where people go to socialize with others who share common interests, even to discuss entirely non-Pick-related topics. There is a jovial camaraderie which often underlines even the fiercest of public disagreements — we may not agree at times, but we are still friends, or at least we are still all “Pickies” and doing this MV thing together. Exchanges in forums can help to build personal and business relationships which last for many years.

Forums have evolved over the years. In the late 1970s I was working on the PLATO network, with university computers around the world that allowed us to e-mail, IM chat, and exchange notes in a public fashion with colleagues everywhere.The forum system was in fact called Notes and was the basis for the famous Lotus Notes.In the early 1980s CompuServe (now owned by AOL) started hosting forums as an alternative to bulletin board systems. The advantage was that one dial-up provided access to hundreds of forum areas in a real international setting. When I found there was no Pick forum at CompuServe, in about 1992, I initiated discussion with them to create one. The people responsible for this area couldn’t understand what a database or DBMS was (go figure), and eventually we settled with “Pick” being a subsection of Unix.

The term Usenet refers to yet another forum network. At one time it was an independent network, but by the mid- 1980s most of its traffic was running over ARPANET, a key component of what today we call the Internet.With Usenet, systems around the world accept and make available postings submitted with the Network News Transport Protocol. NNTP is a lot like e-mail (SMTP) except that your posting gets broadcast to many systems rather than to specific targets. People using an NNTP client (sort of like an e-mail client) poll their system for recent updates. Usenet isn’t owned or moderated by anyone — it isn’t related to Yahoo!, Google,AOL, or any other company. Anyone in the world is free to post to any one of over 60,000 public Usenet forums; it’s unknown how many private Usenet servers and forums exist. Usenet organizes forums in categories by name, a system that has largely fallen apart over the years, but originally COMP groups were for computer discussions, REC groups were for recreational topics, and ALT was for almost anything else.

Back in 1993, David Ruggiero followed the process called Request For Discussion to create comp.databases.pick (often referred to simply as CDP), a Pick category among many other comp.databases.* groups. After registering the RFD, a Call For Votes was required to see if there was any interest in creating the forum.Enough votes were found, the group was created, David posted the first note September 27, 1993 — and the rest is history... CDP is now the communal water cooler of the MV world. It’s where people go to share detailed information, offer jobs, request services, and often just vent frustration. It’s a place where newcomers ask questions like “what is Pick,” where Pick icons can explain how the system was originally written, where MV corporate politics are discussed extensively, and where Pickies occasionally pick friendly fights with relational theorists about how poor the SQL model really is. The general demeanor is professional and pleasant (very good Netiquette), with frequent and cordial salutations among participants. There are exceptions, passionate disagreements to occasional name calling, but there is very little “riff raff” or spam from outsiders, and while some discussions are off-topic (not specifically related to MV issues), they are almost always still relevant to what’s important to people in the MV community. It’s generally understood that one’s persona in the forum may not necessarily reflect their true character — some people appear at odds in CDP but remain close friends and business associates off-list.CDP is a MV-vendor independent forum where questions and comments are posted for almost every product or service related to the MV DBMS

To some, CDP is the pulse of the market, to others a wealth of free knowledge to facilitate development and client satisfaction, and others dismiss it as home to a bunch of discontented people with too much time on their hands. However it’s viewed, CDP is a MV-vendor independent forum where questions and comments are posted for almost every product or service related to the MV DBMS.The personal and business bias of individuals is well balanced by others, so that a well rounded set of commentary is presented on almost all topics. I tend to think of CDP as a starting place for users to get ideas to present to their vendors, or as a place to get a second opinion after users have consulted with their vendors.The number of people who actually participate is small but statistics show the number of people who simply lurk is much larger than one would imagine.

For product and vendor-specific forums, one needs to check Web sites or e-mail lists. General forums like CDP are very helpful but it’s often better to post questions to more focused forums. jBASE has an e-mail list hosted through Google Groups. Raining Data and Revelation have Web-based forums accessible from their respective Web sites. U2 users have both a Users list for more technical/business discussions,and a separate Community list for general banter.There is an e-mail forum for Open- QM hosted through Yahoo! The U2UG also provides access to lists specifically for users of RedBack and System Builder and related products. Products like MITS, AccuTerm and DesignBais also have forums on their Web sites for users and developers.

How does one access these sites? There is no room here to provide details for accessing all of these forums, if interested, please visit the link at the bottom of this article. With experience, many people express firm preference for one medium or another (e-mail vs. browser vs. Usenet) and it’s for this reason that some lists are available in more than one medium from various sources. For example, Google allows people the convenience of reading and writing Usenet postings in a Web page, but Google has nothing to do with Usenet itself, Usenet is not natively HTML/browserbased, and the media are often confused. Email clients like Outlook Express allow registering for Usenet feeds like CDP, making CDP look like an e-mail forum to some people, and giving the rest of us some laughs when someone posts personal e-mail to the public forum.

In this discussion of forums, I’ve raised some points bearing further scrutiny. Will VARs want their end users to see ads from competitors? Will employers want to expose employees to job ads? Will salespeople offer these forums as a sign of a lively market when they include sentiments of impending doom and gloom for MV mixed among optimistic commentary? Will end users ask for solutions their VARs can’t provide? Are forums as much a waste of time as they are enlightening? If one just looks at negatives, then the entire Internet can be evaluated simply as a bad idea. Forum browsing, like any activity, should be done in moderation, and the data found there should be discussed, verified, and evaluated as part of a larger whole.The fact is that there are competing products and job opportunities everywhere. As vendors and employers, it’s our job to stand up to competition, not hide the people who rely on us from it.Many end users are inspired by the ideas presented in these forums, and VARs who are responsive stand to profit by satisfying their clients’ requests. Employers should consider all of the free information available in these forums, which may help to trim development time and inspire new and better ways of doing things. And about doom and gloom — any IT market is only as alive as the products and people who keep it alive. Outside of Spectrum conferences, periodicals like Spectrum Magazine, and these forums, there are few venues that prove there is any life to this market at all. Just the fact that we have such a healthy and vocal market should be enough to sway the critics and maybe even help in the sales cycle.

In addition to discussion forums there are Web sites dedicated to providing free information to MV users and developers. As examples, PickSource.com and mvDevCentral.com exist only through the generous efforts of Glen Batchelor working for the community on his own time. Both of these sites offer downloads and forums, and both support a common chat medium known as IRC for live text conferences. PickSource also has many HowTo articles submitted by members of our community. Malcolm Bull also offers a wealth of data about MV syntax and subsystems for many platforms.And of course, let’s not forget that Spectrum Magazine has years of back issues online and free for your review.

So information is certainly out there, as well as hundreds of people who openly share their knowledge and experience. For details about all of the sources mentioned in this article, please visit http://Nebula-RnD.com/ Spectrum.

Tony Gravagno is president of Nebula Research and Development, now expanding to offer complete solutions and development services for VARs and end users in the MV world and beyond. E-mail for information.

© 2007 Nebula Research and Development