Does anybody have references on designing/writing businnes applications
in Lisp ?
I am particulary interested in Lisp applications for production
management and inventory management.
>Does anybody have references on designing/writing businnes applications
>in Lisp ?
>I am particulary interested in Lisp applications for production
>management and inventory management.
Google has this reference regarding the suitability of Common Lisp for
various business applications:
http://www.franz.com/resources/educational_resources/white_papers/CL_for_SOA.pdf
The lack of concrete examples of CL applications, and the fact that the
essay was written in 2005, suggest that you will not find real examples
of CL applications in this field. Good news for anyone who wants to
write such an application - less competition.
From: Joe Marshall
Subject: Re: Business applications in Lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <1x6avf7s.fsf@ccs.neu.edu>
"Eric Lavigne" <············@gmail.com> writes:
>>Does anybody have references on designing/writing businnes applications
>>in Lisp ?
>>I am particulary interested in Lisp applications for production
>>management and inventory management.
>
> Google has this reference regarding the suitability of Common Lisp for
> various business applications:
> http://www.franz.com/resources/educational_resources/white_papers/CL_for_SOA.pdf
>
> The lack of concrete examples of CL applications, and the fact that the
> essay was written in 2005, suggest that you will not find real examples
> of CL applications in this field.
I'm not so sure. I think it might be the case that there are real
examples of business applications with `Lisp inside', but that we
computer language aficionados aren't very aware of them.
At ILC, Alex Peake showed us how he was using CL to generate C# code
for .NET business applications. The Lisp code wasn't part of the
generated application, but rather was used as a meta-language for C#.
I found this interesting for two reasons. First, as Alex would freely
admit, this is a rather mundane use of lisp. It consists mostly of
format strings and a few macros. There was little use for the rich
set of features that lisp comes with, just extensive use of a couple
of simple things. Alex mentioned that he was concerned that such a
trivial use of lisp would be of little interest to the heavy duty
hackers.
The second reason that this was interesting is that I think of lisp as
a serious power tool for solving really hard problems. It simply
never occurred to me that generating C# code with format strings would
be valuable to anyone. Had I written something like this, I would
never have thought to give it name, call it an `Application', and
promote it as a `Product'.
I know virtually nothing about production management and inventory
management. I'm sure that inventory management for a large company
like KMart has some serious challenges and no doubt some big IT
corporation has software that helps solve them. But there are a lot
of small businesses out there (over 23 million businesses in the US)
that can't afford the big solutions and find the shrink-wrap solutions
like Quickbooks to be inadequate. Some of these businesses use Lisp
to aid in inventory management and production management.
The people using lisp in `trivial' ways may not see any reason to
mention the fact. They certainly don't submit papers to the journals
I read. Conversely, the journals I read generally don't solicit
papers about inventory management. I imagine that journals that cover
inventory management (a fascinating topic, I'm sure) don't go into
details about the implementation language.
I can believe that there are interesting uses of Lisp in business that
I'm completely ignorant of.
~jrm
Some "real examples" are not advertised on the web or by any vendor.
Why should they be? I know people who've made real nice cash with Lisp
software without ever advertising "hey, I've done this! Look!" In fact,
in that particular area the OP mentioned (financial software/business),
this would hardly be encouraged (I don't think a banking institution,
for instance, would advertise an expert system software).
···········@gmail.com writes:
> Some "real examples" are not advertised on the web or by any vendor.
> Why should they be? I know people who've made real nice cash with Lisp
> software without ever advertising "hey, I've done this! Look!" In fact,
> in that particular area the OP mentioned (financial software/business),
> this would hardly be encouraged (I don't think a banking institution,
> for instance, would advertise an expert system software).
Actually they DO advertise them, only indirectly, as lay off numbers...
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.12
GCS d? s++:++ a+ C+++ UL++++ P--- L+++ E+++ W++ N+++ o-- K- w---
O- M++ V PS PE++ Y++ PGP t+ 5+ X++ R !tv b+++ DI++++ D++
G e+++ h+ r-- z?
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
From: Joe Marshall
Subject: Re: Business applications in Lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <vf3njxpg.fsf@comcast.net>
"Massimiliano Campagnoli" <····@paoloastori.com> writes:
> Does anybody have references on designing/writing businnes applications
> in Lisp ?
> I am particulary interested in Lisp applications for production
> management and inventory management.
That's a tricky one. I'd suggest asking Franz (www.franz.com),
Lispworks (www.lispworks.com), and Gensym (www.gensym.com) to see what
you can find out.
--
~jrm
On 9163 day of my life Joe Marshall wrote:
> Gensym (www.gensym.com)
I will name my future company MULTIPLE-VALUE-BIND.
Or MACROLET, perhaps...
--
Ivan Boldyrev
Violets are red, Roses are blue. //
I'm schizophrenic, And so am I.
From: Joe Marshall
Subject: Re: Business applications in Lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <3bqpfk1r.fsf@ccs.neu.edu>
Ivan Boldyrev <···············@cgitftp.uiggm.nsc.ru> writes:
> On 9163 day of my life Joe Marshall wrote:
>> Gensym (www.gensym.com)
>
> I will name my future company MULTIPLE-VALUE-BIND.
> Or MACROLET, perhaps...
That's probably better than UPDATE-INSTANCE-FOR-REDEFINED-CLASS
From: Christophe Rhodes
Subject: Re: Business applications in Lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <sqbr5duztn.fsf@cam.ac.uk>
Joe Marshall <···@ccs.neu.edu> writes:
> Ivan Boldyrev <···············@cgitftp.uiggm.nsc.ru> writes:
>
>> On 9163 day of my life Joe Marshall wrote:
>>> Gensym (www.gensym.com)
>>
>> I will name my future company MULTIPLE-VALUE-BIND.
>> Or MACROLET, perhaps...
>
> That's probably better than UPDATE-INSTANCE-FOR-REDEFINED-CLASS
Or NOTE-OUTPUT-RECORD-CHILD-CHANGED.[*]
Christophe
[*] Worst. Lambda list. Ever. Gory details at
<http://www.stud.uni-karlsruhe.de/~unk6/clim-spec/21-3.html#_1039>.
On 2005-07-08, Ivan Boldyrev <···············@cgitftp.uiggm.nsc.ru> wrote:
> On 9163 day of my life Joe Marshall wrote:
>> Gensym (www.gensym.com)
>
> I will name my future company MULTIPLE-VALUE-BIND.
> Or MACROLET, perhaps...
>
>
How about simply 'Let*' or 'Defun'?
Mike
On 9164 day of my life ·····@mikee.ath.cx wrote:
>> I will name my future company MULTIPLE-VALUE-BIND.
>> Or MACROLET, perhaps...
>
> How about simply 'Let*' or 'Defun'?
LET* is too short, and DEFUN has some negativeness because of "de-"
prefix.
--
Ivan Boldyrev
Perl is a language where 2 x 2 is not equal to 4.
On Fri, 08 Jul 2005 12:16:47 +0700, <···············@cgitftp.uiggm.nsc.ru> wrote:
>
> On 9163 day of my life Joe Marshall wrote:
>> Gensym (www.gensym.com)
>
> I will name my future company MULTIPLE-VALUE-BIND.
> Or MACROLET, perhaps...
or a synonym to OTHER-PEOPLES-MONEY...
--
LOOP :: a Domain Specific Language.
Ivan Boldyrev wrote:
> On 9163 day of my life Joe Marshall wrote:
>
>>Gensym (www.gensym.com)
>
> I will name my future company MULTIPLE-VALUE-BIND.
> Or MACROLET, perhaps...
Careful, you could get sued by Chevrolet.
Pascal
--
2nd European Lisp and Scheme Workshop
July 26 - Glasgow, Scotland - co-located with ECOOP 2005
http://lisp-ecoop05.bknr.net/
From: Christopher C. Stacy
Subject: Re: Business applications in Lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <u4qb7h24w.fsf@news.dtpq.com>
"Massimiliano Campagnoli" <····@paoloastori.com> writes:
> Does anybody have references on designing/writing
> businnes applications in Lisp ?
I am unclear on what you are seeking.
Advice on how to write such applications in Lisp?
Library components for such applications?
Stories about companies that have successfully done this?
> > Does anybody have references on designing/writing
> > businnes applications in Lisp ?
>
> I am unclear on what you are seeking.
> Advice on how to write such applications in Lisp?
> Library components for such applications?
> Stories about companies that have successfully done this?
I suppose that there is little if anything written about
how to program "business" applications of type T in Lisp.
The next best thing that I would hope for are recommendations of
the form
"So you want to do 'business' applications of type T in Lisp.
You are experienced in Lisp, but relatively new to the T domain.
To get up to speed quickest on T, to grasp the
essence of T so as to be able to translate it into a
Lisp program, you can look at any of the vast material written
about T, but in particular, I highly recommend reading R."
for various values of T. I can think of: inventory
(as mentioned in the original post), accounting,
payroll, human resources management, operations,
workflow, document management, ..., and may meta
topics like integration of various application types.
Also, I assume that many of these application types are database-y,
so I would be interested in references on how best to
do database applications in Lisp. Issues like how best to
allocate functionality between the database and Lisp.
Massimiliano Campagnoli wrote:
> Does anybody have references on designing/writing businnes applications
> in Lisp ?
> I am particulary interested in Lisp applications for production
> management and inventory management.
I don't know if these qualify, but anyway:
* Shooting A Moving Target[1]
* Tracking Assets in the Production of 'Final Fantasy : The Spirits
Within'[2]
Both are by Shiro Kawai and describe the usage of Common Lisp in parts
of the production of the Final Fantasy movie[3].
HTH,
Ivan
[1] http://www.shiro.dreamhost.com/scheme/docs/jlugm2000.html
[2] http://www.lava.net/~shiro/Private/essay/gdc2002.html
[3] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0173840/
Massimiliano Campagnoli wrote:
> Does anybody have references on designing/writing businnes applications
> in Lisp ?
Just delete the last two words of your question and you will find
plenty. the only difference Lisp makes is the same difference it makes
in any other kind of programming.
Did you have a more specific question? I did a phat biz app, Lisp all
the way down (to some third party libs -- gotta have libs).
--
Kenny
Why Lisp? http://lisp.tech.coop/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
"If you plan to enter text which our system might consider to be
obscene, check here to certify that you are old enough to hear the
resulting output." -- Bell Labs text-to-speech interactive Web page
I find that Lisp, so powerful in many ways, is not, or has not been
demonstrated to be, good at the sort of simple CRUD tasks that
'less-powerful' languages like Delphi, Visual Basic and such excel in.
But maybe this is not the language per se, but the IDE. Even as simple
a language as PL/SQL becomes a powerful database apps development
system when, as in Oracle Developer, supported by draggable data aware
objects and ready-made direct plumbing to the backend. A pity because
the days of apps that don't go farther than CRUD are over; users have
been asking for results that can only be delivered efficiently using
power and sophistication. But do developers turn to Lisp? No, with a
lot of work, they bend and stretch their 'wimpy' tools, with limited
success, of course. Smalltalk was at some point and still is a much
better database app tool than Lisp. Unfortunately, it self-destructed.
You won't find many business database applications in Lisp because the
people who use Lisps are not doing business database applications. My
observation is that they use Lisp to whip up a quick solution to unique
lab and research problems, and then they forget the solutions, even if
they are brilliant solutions, not having the time nor the desire to
properly package them for the consumption of others, nor the
realization that the solution, so simple to them, can be useful to
others. What a waste. The Lisp community has no infrastructure for an
orderly sharing of solutions. Think of Perl's CPAN. And the wonderful
Gem facility of Ruby. That requires leadership, and Lisp has lost its
own.
gk
From: Christopher C. Stacy
Subject: Re: Business applications in Lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <u8y0eo6ks.fsf@news.dtpq.com>
And what are you doing to solve this problem that you perceive?
Just trolling?
I find it odd that some very smart people would respond to the
expression of a problem with "And what are you doing to solve this
problem that you perceive?", as if the poster's lack of action towards
a resolution does not give him the right to identify the problem.
Would you consider the lack of a coordinated mechanism to easily and
safely (ala Gem) distribute solutions in the Lisp community to be a
problem? If so, what are YOU doing about this problem? You CAN do it,
and certainly you have the standing in the community to lead it.
gk
Jenjhiz wrote:
> I find it odd that some very smart people would respond to the
> expression of a problem with "And what are you doing to solve this
> problem that you perceive?", as if the poster's lack of action towards
> a resolution does not give him the right to identify the problem.
By not actually trying to solve your problem, you demonstrate
that you don't really care. So, why do you imagine that we
should care about your problem?
Paul
"Jenjhiz" <·······@yahoo.com> writes:
> I'm afraid I don't consider this to be my problem. It is your problem
> and you should care.
If people don't see it as their problem, why do you think it is their
problem? And why do you think they should care about something that
they don't see as a problem?
/Jon
--
'j' - a n t h o n y at romeo/charley/november com
From: Christopher C. Stacy
Subject: Re: Business applications in Lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <ur7e677zh.fsf@news.dtpq.com>
"Jenjhiz" <·······@yahoo.com> writes:
> Would you consider the lack of a coordinated mechanism to
> easily and safely (ala Gem) distribute solutions in the
> Lisp community to be a problem?
No.
And that response brilliantly summrizes what is fundamentally wrong.
From: Joe Marshall
Subject: Re: Business applications in Lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <3bqmgyp5.fsf@comcast.net>
"Jenjhiz" <·······@yahoo.com> writes:
> And that response brilliantly summrizes what is fundamentally wrong.
My God! Why didn't you tell us sooner?!
--
~jrm
Jenjhiz wrote:
> I find it odd that some very smart people would respond to the
> expression of a problem with "And what are you doing to solve this
> problem that you perceive?", as if the poster's lack of action towards
> a resolution does not give him the right to identify the problem.
You have made a number of very broad claims, some of which are
definitely not true, yet you have chosen to make them sound as if they
were facts. You will probably get better results if you rephrase your
posting as a question, with an indication of what you have done yourself
to solve your actual problems. People are then generally very helpful,
as you can observe in other threads.
Pascal
--
2nd European Lisp and Scheme Workshop
July 26 - Glasgow, Scotland - co-located with ECOOP 2005
http://lisp-ecoop05.bknr.net/
Jenjhiz wrote:
> I find that Lisp, so powerful in many ways, is not, or has not been
> demonstrated to be, good at the sort of simple CRUD tasks that
> 'less-powerful' languages like Delphi, Visual Basic and such excel in.
Really? you've tried to write such applications in Common Lisp, found
that CL was somehow lacking, and have come to this conclusion? i find
that hard to believe.
> But maybe this is not the language per se, but the IDE.
[....]
But earlier you said that the Lisp Language was not good at these tasks.
Now you are backing down and saying it's the lack of IDE.
Those of us who make their living doing "business applications" in
common lisp might disagree. There are many simple tools for doing CRUD
in CL.
There is Dialogue, which i've used for simple tasks. It makes CRUD
pretty easy. A quick example:
(defclass employee ()
((name :type string :initarg :name
:accessor name)
(email :type string :initarg :email
:accessor email)
(full-time? :type boolean :initarg :full-time?
:initform T :accessor full-time?)
(department :type keyword :initarg :department
:initform :shipping :accessor department)
(salary :type integer :initarg :salary
:initform 2000 :accessor salary)))
Minimal dialogue
To obtain a minimal dialog to edit an instance of employee (*employee-1*):
(dialogue
`(name
department
full-time?
email
salary)
:data *employee-1*
:title "Minimal")
(from http://www.algo.be/cl/dialogue/examples.htm)
Thats pretty easy, and i can't see anyone needing an IDE for that.
There is also my own LISP-ON-LINES (darcs get
http://versions.tech.coop/lisp-on-lines/) if you want to make it
web-based, which i usually do. The same dialog as above might look like:
def-view-class/meta employee ()
((name :type string :initarg :name
:accessor name)
(email :type string :initarg :email
:accessor email)
(full-time? :type boolean :initarg :full-time?
:initform T :accessor full-time?)
(department :type keyword :initarg :department
:initform :shipping :accessor department)
(salary :type integer :initarg :salary
:initform 2000 :accessor salary)))
(make-presentation *employee-1*
:type editor
:initargs
'(:attributes
(name
department
full-time?
email
salary)))
Again, not very difficult, yet _very_ powerful.
> You won't find many business database applications in Lisp because the
> people who use Lisps are not doing business database applications.
Bullshit. There are lots of us doing business applications in Lisp. In
fact, most lisp developers i know are doing "business applications",
which CL excels at.
> My
> observation is that they use Lisp to whip up a quick solution to unique
> lab and research problems, and then they forget the solutions, even if
> they are brilliant solutions, not having the time nor the desire to
> properly package them for the consumption of others, nor the
> realization that the solution, so simple to them, can be useful to
> others.
While i can't speak for your own experience, i might suggest you'd get
better observations if you removed your head from the warm, dark place
you seem to have it stuck in ;)
> What a waste. The Lisp community has no infrastructure for an
> orderly sharing of solutions. Think of Perl's CPAN. And the wonderful
> Gem facility of Ruby. That requires leadership, and Lisp has lost its
> own.
What, pray tell, is wrong with Cliki.net and ASDF-INSTALL? works like a
charm for me.
ps - "Don't follow leaders, watch your parking meters"
--
Drew Crampsie
drewc at tech dot coop
"Never mind the bollocks -- here's the sexp's tools."
-- Karl A. Krueger on comp.lang.lisp
Sometime ago, there was a thread here about something like what users
of other languages should know about Lisp. I think the above post is an
example of what Lispers should know about other languages and
development systems.
In Oracle Developer, I do not have to do any of that coding. All I have
to do is base a block on a database table, and all the coding for crud,
plus transaction and locking, and triggers based on database
constraints, are done for me. In one or two minutes, I have the data
entry form, in form format, or in grid format, plus the crud and
navigation icons on the toolbar, ready for use.
gk
"Jenjhiz" <·······@yahoo.com> writes:
> In Oracle Developer, I do not have to do any of that coding. All I have
> to do is base a block on a database table, and all the coding for crud,
> plus transaction and locking, and triggers based on database
> constraints, are done for me. In one or two minutes, I have the data
> entry form, in form format, or in grid format, plus the crud and
> navigation icons on the toolbar, ready for use.
Yeah thats great, but your 1 or 2 minute form will be clumsy and
difficult to use (and sometimes impossible) once its requirements get
complicated or the datasets get larger. And then you'll be desperate
for a sufficiently expressive gui design language so you can implement
the subtle characteristics the quickie tools don't give you.
How many nice simple data control based forms have we seen that begin to
suck when there are thousands of items in combo boxes or application
semantics really don't suit the navigation style which data controls
impose?
Gregm
Jenjhiz wrote:
> Sometime ago, there was a thread here about something like what users
> of other languages should know about Lisp. I think the above post is an
> example of what Lispers should know about other languages and
> development systems.
So you figure most Lisp developers are not familiar with other languages
and development systems? I for one only discovered Lisp recently, having
spent most of my career developing in other languages. The story is the
same with many. I am familiar enough with other langauges and toolsets
to have discovered their shortcomings and moved on with, what i believe,
is the better solution.
Your GUI tools do not impress me .. i write programs that generate tools
like that.
> In Oracle Developer, I do not have to do any of that coding. All I have
> to do is base a block on a database table, and all the coding for crud,
> plus transaction and locking, and triggers based on database
> constraints, are done for me. In one or two minutes, I have the data
> entry form, in form format, or in grid format, plus the crud and
> navigation icons on the toolbar, ready for use.
That's great. I have a tool to do that as well. it looks like this :
;;;; for one table :
(def-view-class/table "employee")
(call 'view-table :editablep t :table 'employee)
;;;; or just do the whole database :
(def-views-from-database *database*)
(call 'view-all-tables :database *database*)
Which gives me all the CRUD based on the data relations, a full search
interface including a query builder ,transactions and locking, plus
triggers based on the constraints, a full O/R mapping and web based
delivery. It's great for throwing up quick demos and making sure the
data model is sufficient, but for developing an application i need a
level of customisation that my default presentations don't provide.
So i subclass the default, define a couple of methods on the generic
functions that compose a presentation, and morph my demo into the final
application.
That, and i'm not tied to Oracle, which neither i nor my customers need
(or can afford). There's no GUI, although i suppose i could add a couple
menu items to Emacs, but i prefer the keyboard to the mouse.
--
Drew Crampsie
drewc at tech dot coop
"Never mind the bollocks -- here's the sexp's tools."
-- Karl A. Krueger on comp.lang.lisp
"Jenjhiz" <·······@yahoo.com> writes:
> Sometime ago, there was a thread here about something like what users
> of other languages should know about Lisp. I think the above post is an
> example of what Lispers should know about other languages and
> development systems.
>
> In Oracle Developer, I do not have to do any of that coding. All I have
> to do is base a block on a database table, and all the coding for crud,
> plus transaction and locking, and triggers based on database
> constraints, are done for me. In one or two minutes, I have the data
> entry form, in form format, or in grid format, plus the crud and
> navigation icons on the toolbar, ready for use.
>
As someone who has worked with Oracle for many years, I'd have to say
what absolute rubbish. Oracle is certainly my favorite database for
most business apps I've written and worked on. However, Oracle tools
have to be some of the *worst* I've ever used. Its only in the very
recent past that working with Oracle Forms or Reports has stopped
being one of the most frustrating experiences I've ever had using a
tool. While I will agree that if you are doing something extremely
trivial, you can do it quickly and easily as you describe, but once
you have a complex app with lots of complex dependencies/requirements,
Oracle Forms/Reports really sucks.
Note also, its only since the more recent 9iAS many of the typical
Oracle 'quirks' have been removed and its only recently we have been
able to escape the necessity of having Oracle Forms/Report clients
installed on the user desktop (now only requiring jinitiator).
With respect to transactions, trigger, functions etc - I get all of
that using CL and CLSQL and I can do a lot of stuff faster than any of
the many other developers I work with - in fact, our experience has
been that Java and Perl are faster to develop in than Oracle Forms or
Reports.
finally, how the hell can you make a true comparison that means
anything - comparing the toolkit from one of the worlds largest
companies and which costs *large sums* to license with a largely open
source community of lisp libraries and interpreters is just
stupid. Furthermore, if you were to compare commrecial with
commercial, you would find that the commercial lisp implementations
have all the nice IDE's that you claim don't exist.
Go find a new bridge to climb under Troll.
Tim
>
--
Tim Cross
The e-mail address on this message is FALSE (obviously!). My real e-mail is
to a company in Australia called rapttech and my login is tcross - if you
really need to send mail, you should be able to work it out!
Tim X wrote:
> As someone who has worked with Oracle for many years, I'd have to say
> what absolute rubbish. Oracle is certainly my favorite database for
> most business apps I've written and worked on. However, Oracle tools
> have to be some of the *worst* I've ever used. Its only in the very
> recent past that working with Oracle Forms or Reports has stopped
> being one of the most frustrating experiences I've ever had using a
> tool. While I will agree that if you are doing something extremely
> trivial, you can do it quickly and easily as you describe, but once
> you have a complex app with lots of complex dependencies/requirements,
> Oracle Forms/Reports really sucks.
>
> Note also, its only since the more recent 9iAS many of the typical
> Oracle 'quirks' have been removed and its only recently we have been
> able to escape the necessity of having Oracle Forms/Report clients
> installed on the user desktop (now only requiring jinitiator).
>
> With respect to transactions, trigger, functions etc - I get all of
> that using CL and CLSQL and I can do a lot of stuff faster than any of
> the many other developers I work with - in fact, our experience has
> been that Java and Perl are faster to develop in than Oracle Forms or
> Reports.
>
> finally, how the hell can you make a true comparison that means
> anything - comparing the toolkit from one of the worlds largest
> companies and which costs *large sums* to license with a largely open
> source community of lisp libraries and interpreters is just
> stupid. Furthermore, if you were to compare commrecial with
> commercial, you would find that the commercial lisp implementations
> have all the nice IDE's that you claim don't exist.
>
> Go find a new bridge to climb under Troll.
>
> Tim
Hi!
My personal experience is different. I've been using Developer 4.5 and 6i since
1999 and created/maintained hundreds of forms and reports, trivial and very
complex ones. It's a 4gl system and by nature limited in comparison to general
purpose environments. But it's the best toolset I know to create database-
centric end user applications. You will need a good custom set of .plls,
property classes and complex objects and most of the business logic should be
implemented on the server. But I admit that Developer has several bugs,
especially the Reports Developer, and there are a problems with the Forms
Runtime, too. It got worse since Oracle contaminated the tools with java.
Contrary to what you wrote, client/server deployment is easy. You don't have to
install the runtime on every client PC. On Windows all clients have to use the
same network share, then you import the necessary registry entries and put a
link on the desktop.
Our company hasn't switched to Developer 9i or 10g because of the enormous costs
of the application server and the performance downgrade. Oracle annoyed a lot of
customers by abandoning client server and trying to shove the app server down
our throats. A pity it's closed source. That's why we are looking for another
solution. Being a long time fan of lisp I dare to dream of something like TCL on
the client side, a lisp application server and oracle as the database. But we're
a 2 developer shop and just don't have the manpower to port our 214 forms, 163
reports ERP system to another architecture, even if such one existed.
Chris
CN <·········@yahoo.de> writes:
> Tim X wrote:
> Hi!
>
> My personal experience is different. I've been using Developer 4.5 and
> 6i since 1999 and created/maintained hundreds of forms and reports,
> trivial and very complex ones. It's a 4gl system and by nature limited
> in comparison to general purpose environments. But it's the best
> toolset I know to create database-
> centric end user applications. You will need a good custom set of
> .plls, property classes and complex objects and most of the business
> logic should be implemented on the server. But I admit that Developer
> has several bugs, especially the Reports Developer, and there are a
> problems with the Forms Runtime, too. It got worse since Oracle
> contaminated the tools with java.
>
Perhaps I was a little strong - bad day at work. Its true that a 4GL
language does constrain what you can do, but I've found Oracle 6i
Forms/Reports a real paini to maintain. We had a hell of a lot of them
though and my initial introduction was with Oracle 7.0.4. I too have
had issues with the 'bugs' in reports.
> Contrary to what you wrote, client/server deployment is easy. You
> don't have to install the runtime on every client PC. On Windows all
> clients have to use the same network share, then you import the
> necessary registry entries and put a link on the desktop.
Been there, done that. It works OK with only small to menium numbers
of users. We have over 4000 local users and another 1000 on our
WAN. In the end, we used Citrix to deploy the client. Using even just
a share will still cause you headaches with the registry getting
screwed - can end up a huge user support issue.
> Our company hasn't switched to Developer 9i or 10g because of the
> enormous costs of the application server and the performance
> downgrade. Oracle annoyed a lot of customers by abandoning client
> server and trying to shove the app server down our throats. A pity
> it's closed source. That's why we are looking for another
> solution. Being a long time fan of lisp I dare to dream of something
> like TCL on the client side, a lisp application server and oracle as
> the database. But we're a 2 developer shop and just don't have the
> manpower to port our 214 forms, 163 reports ERP system to another
> architecture, even if such one existed.
>
We adopted 9i fairly early and are now moving to 10g. It actually
works well compared to the old model - at least for our
needs. However, we still find forms/reports development slow compared
to doing equivelent web based reports using things like perl and to
some extent even Java. the Oracle forms/reports still have a place -
especially when you want less "stateless" interfaces. However, we are
still finding it too slow to respond to client needs. Currently, we
ahve about 10 developers working solely with reports/forms. However, a
couple of us are in the lucky position of being given a mandate to
find/create faster solutions. I'm currently trying to show how fast we
could do some things if we used CL. Still a fair bit of FUD to get rid
of, but progress looks promising at this stage.
Tim
--
Tim Cross
The e-mail address on this message is FALSE (obviously!). My real e-mail is
to a company in Australia called rapttech and my login is tcross - if you
really need to send mail, you should be able to work it out!
Tim X wrote:
> CN <·········@yahoo.de> writes:
>
> <snip>
>
>>Contrary to what you wrote, client/server deployment is easy. You
>>don't have to install the runtime on every client PC. On Windows all
>>clients have to use the same network share, then you import the
>>necessary registry entries and put a link on the desktop.
>
>
> Been there, done that. It works OK with only small to menium numbers
> of users. We have over 4000 local users and another 1000 on our
> WAN. In the end, we used Citrix to deploy the client. Using even just
> a share will still cause you headaches with the registry getting
> screwed - can end up a huge user support issue.
>
Looks like you are playing in a bigger league than me, I don't have
experience with 4000+ concurrent users. At our largest customer site
there are about 250. The "thin" C/S solution works fine there, but I
see that it will come to it's limits especially if you have users
connected through a WAN.
>
> We adopted 9i fairly early and are now moving to 10g. It actually
> works well compared to the old model - at least for our
> needs. However, we still find forms/reports development slow compared
> to doing equivelent web based reports using things like perl and to
> some extent even Java. the Oracle forms/reports still have a place -
> especially when you want less "stateless" interfaces. However, we are
> still finding it too slow to respond to client needs. Currently, we
> ahve about 10 developers working solely with reports/forms. However, a
I've created a generic reporting solution to speed up Reports development
in PL/SQL. It works quite well for simple master/detail and some matrix
reports. The output can be SYLK (an Excel-readable spreadsheet format),
XML, an Oracle Report or it's displayed in a form. But the static Forms
and Reports world is clearly at it's limits with stuff like that.
> couple of us are in the lucky position of being given a mandate to
> find/create faster solutions. I'm currently trying to show how fast we
> could do some things if we used CL. Still a fair bit of FUD to get rid
> of, but progress looks promising at this stage.
>
> Tim
>
Good luck to you. Don't hesitate to keep the community informed about
your progress. I am very interested in Lisp/Database solutions.
Chris
drewc <·····@rift.com> writes:
> There is also my own LISP-ON-LINES (darcs get
> http://versions.tech.coop/lisp-on-lines/) if you want to make it
> web-based, which i usually do. The same dialog as above might look like:
You really need to get a link to this on the UCW home page. I've been
wanting something like this for months!
--
Alan Shutko <···@acm.org> - I am the rocks.
Windows Error #666: The Devil made it crash.
Alan Shutko wrote:
> drewc <·····@rift.com> writes:
>
>
>>There is also my own LISP-ON-LINES (darcs get
>>http://versions.tech.coop/lisp-on-lines/) if you want to make it
>>web-based, which i usually do. The same dialog as above might look like:
>
>
> You really need to get a link to this on the UCW home page. I've been
> wanting something like this for months!
Well, its not really in a state to be released to the masses (yet), but
i do plan on doing a 0.1 soon, at which point we'll see wider exposure.
That being said, i use it in production, so if you don't need
documentation or support go for it :). (i'm in a bit of a crunch right
now, so if i don't respond to email right away, give me a couple days).
--
Drew Crampsie
drewc at tech dot coop
"Never mind the bollocks -- here's the sexp's tools."
-- Karl A. Krueger on comp.lang.lisp
"Jenjhiz" <·······@yahoo.com> writes:
> I find that Lisp, so powerful in many ways, is not, or has not been
> demonstrated to be, good at the sort of simple CRUD tasks that
> 'less-powerful' languages like Delphi, Visual Basic and such excel in.
> But maybe this is not the language per se, but the IDE. Even as simple
> a language as PL/SQL becomes a powerful database apps development
> system when, as in Oracle Developer, supported by draggable data aware
> objects and ready-made direct plumbing to the backend. A pity because
> the days of apps that don't go farther than CRUD are over; users have
> been asking for results that can only be delivered efficiently using
> power and sophistication. But do developers turn to Lisp? No, with a
> lot of work, they bend and stretch their 'wimpy' tools, with limited
> success, of course. Smalltalk was at some point and still is a much
> better database app tool than Lisp. Unfortunately, it self-destructed.
>
> You won't find many business database applications in Lisp because the
> people who use Lisps are not doing business database applications. My
> observation is that they use Lisp to whip up a quick solution to unique
> lab and research problems, and then they forget the solutions, even if
> they are brilliant solutions, not having the time nor the desire to
> properly package them for the consumption of others, nor the
> realization that the solution, so simple to them, can be useful to
> others. What a waste. The Lisp community has no infrastructure for an
> orderly sharing of solutions. Think of Perl's CPAN. And the wonderful
> Gem facility of Ruby. That requires leadership, and Lisp has lost its
> own.
Great! You've identified a problem with lisp in the business
application domain. Now you know what you have to do to improve the
situation of lisp with respect with business applications.
--
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
>You won't find many business database applications in Lisp because the
>people who use Lisps are not doing business database applications.
Wrong , i earn my bread writing , upgrading and maintaining
business database applications .
Though it's true that there is a probably a 10-15 times Visual Basic
business
application developers for everyone like me