The last big change in rebfpt.prg was on 1st, when I finally resolved the problems with re-connecting the new table into the dbc instead of the old one.
Yesterday Brlja officially notified me that he'll leave the ownership of Avai, and that he's selling his share to partners. Well, he must offer us first, that's in the contract. I replied that it will be whichever way we all agree to, in any case we're going back to status quo ante.
Bata and Željko write that [serbian text was in haircut latin, so I emulated the effect]
It was exciting today. We had a meeting wit Pete today from 9.30 to 13.00, wic Željko sceduled to get more information on te tables he wil need. Te talk soon diverted into te usefulnes of using te fox/delpi, if al te data are on te SQL server.
We came to te conclusion tat it wil sooner or later hapen tat te fox/delpi front-end wil be replaced wit a VB front-end and tat he tinks tat te JCS, being a smal aplication (and considering tat it needs to use COM objects and ADO and foh's problems wit tat) we do completely in VB instead of in fox. He told us tat Dzef has te tool wit wic it al can be done quite quickly, and how tis is a great cance for us to learn tat. It looked to us as a good and finaly rigt idea to finaly start doing some real work. Later we went to talk wit Clara about tat.
Clara, wen se heard wy al and were from, caled Ford, so we retold it to him too wit posible idea to maybe switc to VB if tat tool is so handy. Anyway, Ford anounced to us tat Dzef doesn't have te time to train Us rigt now in VB and tat tool, and if tat can't be done in fox, ten someone „from tat oter division“ wil do it. Of course we just sruged and said „As you wis...“.
Basicaly Ford and his enginering team decided tat tese ehtra aplications be done in fox-s and tere's no return from it now. Tat implies tat we wil have to find a way to figt te ADO problems. We'l send you (I tink tat V. already has te needed files tat you need) one dl wic does te conversion from ADO to fox cursor, toug I tink I read somewere tat te dl has its bugs and doesn't doo al field types rigt, but we'l see about tat later and Gradivoj has been informed of it and we'l tink of someting or dig someting at UA. If tis JCS were a People type ap were you just update te tables, les tan half a misery, but te JCS needs to do te scedule, and tat means tat in te background it needs to crunc wo knows how many tables.
In recap, in te end, he drew how we'l comunicate wit separate databases in SQL wic we'l be able to slam wit SQL-pastroug comands. As far as COM/ADO is te mater, it'l be used only to write and read te „My Hossy“ databse on SQL.
So it's al back to same old and we drive on. How wil it go from here and wat we'l do in te sumer, nobody here knows. Tey al hope for te best, and I'm woried tat it's te only ting tey do.
In te end just let me remark tat Ford is not open to any negotiation and as Clara said we are not in te plans, but for now we are te ones wo deliver te products, maintain te old aps, make new ones and our aps wil be ready on time, wile we'l stil see about teirs.
And today a nasty scene at Zero, wave of layoffs. Not too many people, three or four, but among them Clara. Which was unexpected. Ford convened the whole gang into the big room, practically three yards from my desk, and recited what he had. It didn't matter that she was the best on the job, better than him himself, or was that exactly the matter. Or was the intention to lower the esteem of old fat Hossy to make the thin new one look better, who'd know. She, of course, burst into tears and went off to pick her things. We never saw her again. I don't remember who else got pedaled out.
In the evening she fired few emails to me, and there was a chain of back and forth in several paths. First, at some dark hour in the morning (if the times on emails can be trusted) she notified me of a meeting she missed, where Jeff (but Janna not among the adressees, so sender asked Jeff to forward to her) would start gathering database information to plan the migration for the Hossy 2000 (reborn).
Second, in the evening she asked who else got a leg, she knows of Dave, Andy, Bob and one of Tims. About Bob I was surprised myself - if he was slated for the kick ticket, why didn't he get it half a year ago, why now when there was no special reason. I asked her „did you calm down a bit? I think I'll drop by Anuška and tell her how farsighted she was. Or I was too, for always managing not to be a boss.“ And passed her my yahoo email address. Then she dug out one more - Bryan Tchevroe (spelling it the way they mispronounce the french surname) and Pete Thompson. And Felix has quit! She said she already spoke with Anuška*, Brlja and Joška, and said you passed the news really fast, and of Felix she said „well he stayed longer than I thouhgt... and he won't be the last... fuck them there all of them“. Two guys will be doing her job - one of the remaining Toms or Tims and another girl, „must be cheaper that way“.
Third, asked about my green card, just wants to know, in confidence, how's that going. „Last thing I heard was 6 to 12 months, and that was two months ago. This is no secret - the secret is my intention to leave Zero as soon as I get it. I've got my reassurance from Keith that the investment into bringing me here has returned as early as I went to Houston in November 99 and fixed a bunch of things for Leanne and dr Sorben (the THC, one block away, a prospective customer at the time), and I've given Zero a bunch of guys where I've taught the kernel of them - thus leaving my company back home on the dry. I really don't feel I owe Zero, and as far as loyalty is concerned, they haven't shown much respect for my business, so, it's mutual...“ To which she said „rightly so, you deserv better, if you need a letter of recommendation anywhere, just let me know, I'll gladly write it for you“.
The status is 13:30 - thirteen of those who came before me, thirty of those who have left.
The next day the Marvinskis guy announced the new timetable for new Hossy (and how to dig it out of the shit pit), which was already lagging behind itself. At least they hired Jana and Jeff, who went on to work immediately, to create the database from scratch, because whatever Frank left was pure technicolor shit. They already started asking about the layout of tables in the old one, and the art was in this state:
the free tables are either junk or one of the four transitional tables used for importing schedule data from Annandale into Evals (don't ask me why they are in peo\data, I found them there) - these four are schcal, srotation, srotates and swards (calendar, shift, shifts, wards). The tables we really use are the ones in .dbcs.
The sxxx* tables are the data dictionaries and other metadata from vpm framework; since each module has its own, it's worth noting that the one in use for all is the one in peo\data directory. The others are not updated for quite a while, simply because they're not used at runtime. This way the metadata were centralized, which had its ups and downs. So, it's in peo\data directory:
...
Some of the tables, fields and indexes are virtual, i.e. they are views, views' fields, and indexes to be built when a view is open. The views were not much in use because the versions of vpm prior to 5.1 were not capable of handling views (even though fox had them since 1995), and when 5.1 came we already had the tables set. Views are largely used in evals only, and even there only for the attending schedule and answer entry screens.
There was another problem with automation of emails to send from Hossy, and whether moving to fox 6 would solve it. I see that on 5th and 6th Bata and I have exchanged a score of test emails, to see how they would go, through which servers etc etc. One of those contains
.loginname='zdclient'
.password='rememberthesun'
One of us had Pink Floyd on his mind...
Here's my response to Ford:
1) anything they may have added in v6 doe not relate to our problem. if it worked with 5, ok, if it didn't, 6 won't do better. The problem we're tackling here is probably very rare. I've posted it on UA, and nobody had a problem of this sort - they're all content with sending emails signed by the current user, and nobody needed to send emails impersonating a different user.
2) I have a few tricks left to try and a few tricks that I haven't even unpacked. I need to get online and test them hot, because whenever I tried to test them from here, our Exchange server intercepted them and turned the emails into emails sent from me, here, instead of Hossy@blabla.edu (or whatever may the actual address there be).
3) we may really use Outlook as an automation server. Adjusting the existing code would take a couple of hours with testing. Since we're already patching this to work for Leevor only (and hopefully we won't have such concerns with other users), and we do have the time until next app season, I suggest we try one of the options each time we log in. It would take just a few more minutes online, and wouldn't disturb their or our workflow.
BTW, I'm online with THW as I write this, uploading fresh build of People.
Bloody fucken m$ - when you need to do something, it knows better and doesn't let you do what you need to do, it forces its will on you instead. Also, this from Karl Kleinkauf from IDSmail:
IDSMail has never supported authenticated SMTP servers. We don't now, nor are we likely to do so, unless in the future there is a much greater demand than we've seen.
Regarding the security patches issued by Microsoft, they were a knee-jerk reaction to the "I love you" virus and only serve to make any kind of automated e-mailings near impossible. Our recommendation is to train the users not to open unexpected file attachments and forget about the MS patches.
At any rate, it sounds like you've got a pickle. I wish we could help, but it doesn't look like it.
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* Anuška already left Zero, at about second third of march