Re: Other precompilers besides Pro*C????

In article <378F1E9C.17899D1B_at_Unforgettable.com>, Kenneth C Stahl <BluesSax_at_Unforgettable.com> wrote:
>That pre-supposes that everyone has Perl available. In the corporate world
>we must deal with change-control management, security, standardization and
>sometimes the limitations of what management will allow. I've been working
>in the UNIX world since 1994 and I have yet to work in a production
>environment where Perl is allowed.

We include perl in our flagship product (DataPublisher) which is used by one customer to generate approx 100,000 seven page color reports every month. It currently does this at a rate of approx one per second. If this does not sound large then the fact that the project has resulted in the biggest outsourced print job of its kind in Europe should give a feel for scale. Of course, having Mr DBI and DBD::Oracle as our technical director helps :-)

Seriously, perl is not ideal for all applications - and should be avoided for some - but works very very very :-) well with oracle via DBD::Oracle - which (FYI) sits on top of the OCI API. The DBI and DBD::Oracle software was written for Datapublisher and related IG customer apps/projects that are almost all "business critical" - which means SLA's are in place - and are mostly telecoms related - some with only 15 minutes max downtime windows due to polled data acquisition device buffer rollovers etc.

>As a result I must work with "approved"
>tools such as Pro-C. Management just doesn't trust freeware that has not
>undergone thorough security testing and they don't want to trust their data
>to programming languages which don't have an established validation suite or
>IEEE standards.

Understandable - however the key reason for freeeware avoidance is often that there is no entity that they can sue! Another common reason is that there is often no commercial support available. Cygnus demonstrates just how viable commercial support of free software can be and www.perlclinic.com was started (by us) to address this issue for Perl when Cygnus "dropped the ball".

>Are there other programmers out there who work under similar
>restrictions?????

Oddly enough some of our best customers place a "no free software" restriction upon thier staff - we use 'free' software such as Perl or Hylafax in projects but provide support for its use within the scope of the project.

Jacqui

--
Paul Ingram Group Ltd,140A High Street,Godalming GU7 1AB United Kingdom Email: J.Caren_at_ig.co.uk Fax: +44 1483 419419 Phone: +44 1483 424424 A rather special Perl vacancy :-) http://www.ig.co.uk/about/jobs.html Use SmartCards in e-commerce systems? http://www.smartaxis.com/ Received on Thu Jul 22 1999 - 11:34:26 CDT