Should Cache' be on the MV Family Tree?

#41

Hi
CFO's and finance seem to have a major effect on computer companies. If I
remember correctly the Wang gentleman in Australia circa 1975 discovered
that there were no extradition treaties with the Greek Islands and shouted
himself an extended holiday at the companies expense.
However he was only following in the footsteps of the sales personnel. I
remember one being sent to a conference when plane tickets cost real money.
Enquiries from conference personnel regarding his non appearance led to his
being discovered on a snowfield with appropriate bunny in tow and tickets
long since cashed in. In fact now I think of it he was I believe the person
who sold a hard disk. My business partner got an anguished call from a
customer asking when they were coming to install his new system. Partner
enquired as to what he had, he described a hard disk, partner asked what
else expecting something along lines of cpu, screen, printer, no just hard
disk. Enquiries of salesperson elicited response that customer had a budget
of $7000 and the only thing in the price book for $7000 was a hard disk!
Peter McMurray
"dawn" <dawnwolthuis (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote

sdavmor wrote:

Quote:

Alan Pritchard wrote:
In article <1134050371.079854.271880 (AT) g44g2000cwa (DOT) googlegroups.com>,
dawnwolthuis (AT) gmail (DOT) com (dawn) wrote:

*From:* "dawn" <dawnwolthuis (AT) gmail (DOT) com
*Date:* 8 Dec 2005 05:59:31 -0800

Alan Pritchard wrote:
In article <ZfOlf.14227$ea6.1210 (AT) news-server (DOT) bigpond.net.au>,
excalibur21 (AT) bigpond (DOT) com (Peter McMurray) wrote:

*From:* "Peter McMurray" <excalibur21 (AT) bigpond (DOT) com
*Date:* Thu, 08 Dec 2005 04:03:05 GMT

Hi
I have never heard of Archford Excalibur but Excalibur was a pretty
popular name. In fact due to the vagaries of the Australian states
company and business name registrations there was a girl in
Queensland
using our registered trading name of Excalibur Computer Systems
quite
legally as it was a different state.Weird!
Aaron Gershfeld (sp? Gershfield?) was the MD of Archford (based in
North
London). ISTR they were taken over by a management consultants. Again
ISTR
they also ran a telephone marketing operation using 'resting' actors!
Thanks Alan. Any idea on dates?

Factual details of Excalibur in PRG.
Well, I think I figured out "I Seem To Recall" and for those who don't
speak British MD = Managing Director IIRC. But I'm stumped on PRG and
could use more clues.

Cheers! --dawn

Sorry. PRG = Pick Resources Guide

Dates: 1986ish. Announced at one of the London Spectrum meetings.

As well as the Excalibur, there was also the Pinnacle Brut and Pinnacle
Premiere Cuvee.

Alan

Best wishes
Alan Pritchard
The GLOBAL GAZETTEERT: the world on file
http://www.allm-geodata.com
Tel: +44 (0) 1202 417 477

NOTE my new email address: alan.pritchard (AT) gmail (DOT) com

Archford Computers was founded by Ivor and Aaron Gershfield. It was
part of the Archford Group that also included the English Language
Software Company. John Bramley had gone to London to do the port of
the OA code to the Pinnacle boxes, and then the new Excalibur boxes.
The Pinnacle boxes were OEMd, and used OA v1. The Excalibur boxes
were built from scratch and used OA v2, the same version as was
implemented on the Sequioa line. I hired Savraj Dhillon from ELSC and
brought him to work for me at Medtech in Santa Ana in 1986, based on a
recommendation by John, and the fact that my school and Savraj's
school played each other at cricket and rugby (howzat for "old boy
network"?). Outside of the Excalibur that John had at the COST
(Sequioa) office in Newport Beach (shared with Dr. Don Stanley's
software company), I had the first production model that made it to
the states. Aaron and several of his key people came to the 1987 Las
Vegas Spectrum show, bringing with them an opera singer as part of
their promotional push. I'm sure that image will jog the memory of
some American pickies. Charming people, with a real sense of style.
I worked the Archford booth along with Mike Wright and Savraj, leaving
the other two members of my team (Greg Amov and Ken Cassady) to man
the fort at home. [Now that was a powerhouse development team!]. I
came within 2 inches of setting up a distributorship for the
Excalibur, but the people that owned Medtech hemmed and hawed, so the
deal didn't get done. Too bad, since the machine was bloody
marvelous. The Excalibur was not only very fast for the day, it was
also ugly as sin, being painted a garish psychedelic blue. Wooo
hoooh! It used a Motorola 68030 processor, though the early models
used a 68020 due to the scarcity of the 68030. It also had solid state
RAM, so it recovered very nicely from power outages, not unlike the
old core memory Microdata machines. I last saw any of them in 1989 in
London when I visited the Archford HQ. IIRC in 1990/91 Archford
raised a bunch of money (several million pounds) that was nicked by
their CFO, who disappeared off to South America with his ill-gotten
gains. At which point everything went to hell quickly, resulting in
the Archford group folding and its assets going into receivership. A
sorry end to a very promising company.

Interesting. I found Aaron, so I'll have to ask him about that.
Thanks. --dawn

Quote:

--
Cheers,
SDM -- a 21st century schizoid man
Systems Theory internet music project links:
soundclick <www.soundclick.com/systemstheory
garageband <http://www.garageband.com/artist/systemstheory
"Soundtracks For Imaginary Movies" CD released Dec 2004
"Codetalkers" CD coming Spring 2006
NP: nothing

#42

Excalibur wrote:
[snip]

Quote:

Dicks crap rap trip notwithstanding...

As author of one of these raps, I can assure you that
_the_lyrics_ at least were not crap, and if Dick had
taken my advice and hired Humpty to perform them, you
would agree. IMO.

--
frosty

#43

On 7 Dec 2005 08:46:41 -0800, "Jim Idle" <jimi (AT) temporal-wave (DOT) com>
wrote:

Quote:

[Digression: While you are at it, could you make it so I could point
the query language at a directory of XML documents (instead of XQuery)?
There is a big gap in the XML space for an easy-to-use query language
(perhaps you could add the update processor to it too)? ]

Well, I have made it such that the data source is somewhat independant
of the language itself (don't know where I got that idea), thoguh I
haven't done anything specifically here. I believe though that we can
probably map the XML as a projection from Cache. It is something I
would have to look in to a bit more. I know that the output being XML
would be a plus, and this is in the back of my mind with the new
engine, once I can project MV data files into object/table/XML forms.

Of course once you have Cache as the underlying database, you can
start to look at the Native XML Database capabilities we bring to the
table, which open up some new and interesting opportunities :
www.mgateway.com/extc.htm ; and also our XML Schema-driven forms
environment : http://www.mgateway.com/ewd/XMLForms1.2.pdf

....could be interesting to see these applied to the MV world.

---
Rob Tweed
M/Gateway Developments Ltd

The Pursuit of Productivity : http://www.mgateway.com
---

#44

On 6 Dec 2005 15:46:54 -0800, "dawn" <dawnwolthuis (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

Quote:

Yes, but it was more positive last year than it is this year in my
possibly-wrong opinion. It might just be that I (like many others
doing Java last year) am shifting away from Java to PHP, at least for a
stint. Cache' advertises with the technologies I was using last year
and I haven't noticed them in the AJAX/PHP space yet. That doesn't
mean they aren't there, but I think I'm quite typical and they used to
advertise to me and now they don't.

Oh how ironic this is. Our company developed the so-called WebLink

technology that provided the original web gateway to Cache, and nearly
10 years ago we added a capability to it that was known as the "Event
Broker" that allowed you to do all the things now described under the
umbrella term of Ajax. The successor, Cache Server Pages (the core of
which is based on our original technology) inherited this capability
though it is now known as "hyper-events".

Although I'm pleased to see the AJAX approach becoming mainstream,
it's hugely frustrating to me that the opportunity that our
"proto-Ajax" wasn't recognised and capitalised upon over the past 10
years - the curse of being "ahead of your time" I guess !

Also, unfortunately you won't have seen it advertised by InterSystems,
but our PHP gateway for Cache is becoming very popular :
www.mgateway.com/m-php.htm - there's a growing interest in using PHP
with Cache.

---
Rob Tweed
M/Gateway Developments Ltd

The Pursuit of Productivity : http://www.mgateway.com
---

#45

On Sat, 10 Dec 2005 01:37:25 GMT, Rob Tweed <rtweed (AT) blueyonder (DOT) co.uk>
wrote:

Quote:

On 6 Dec 2005 15:46:54 -0800, "dawn" <dawnwolthuis (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

snip
Although I'm pleased to see the AJAX approach becoming mainstream,
it's hugely frustrating to me that the opportunity that our
"proto-Ajax" wasn't recognised and capitalised upon over the past 10
years - the curse of being "ahead of your time" I guess !

In that case, Cache SHOULD definitely be on the MV family tree...

Welcome to the club!

Quote:

Regards,

Bruce Nichol
Talon Computer Services
ALBURY NSW Australia

http://www.taloncs.com.au

If it ain't broke, fix it until it is....

#46

Excalibur wrote:

Quote:

Hi
CFO's and finance seem to have a major effect on computer companies. If I
remember correctly the Wang gentleman in Australia circa 1975 discovered
that there were no extradition treaties with the Greek Islands and shouted
himself an extended holiday at the companies expense.
However he was only following in the footsteps of the sales personnel. I
remember one being sent to a conference when plane tickets cost real money.
Enquiries from conference personnel regarding his non appearance led to his
being discovered on a snowfield with appropriate bunny in tow and tickets
long since cashed in. In fact now I think of it he was I believe the person
who sold a hard disk. My business partner got an anguished call from a
customer asking when they were coming to install his new system. Partner
enquired as to what he had, he described a hard disk, partner asked what
else expecting something along lines of cpu, screen, printer, no just hard
disk. Enquiries of salesperson elicited response that customer had a budget
of $7000 and the only thing in the price book for $7000 was a hard disk!

I love that story! I'll pass it along to a business ethics professor
to use as an anecdote. No laws were broken, right? The sales person
was supposed to work on behalf of his company to do his best to sell
their products, right? smiles. --dawn

#47

frosty wrote:

Quote:

Excalibur wrote:
[snip]

Dicks crap rap trip notwithstanding...

As author of one of these raps, I can assure you that
_the_lyrics_ at least were not crap, and if Dick had
taken my advice and hired Humpty to perform them, you
would agree. IMO.

Hmmm. I recollect a fragment of the lyrics. Something like...

"Zoomin', cruisin', double-clutchin' interface,
At the speed of light, the data's right there in your face!"

Sorry John, but I've definitely heard better. ;^)

Luke

#48

Quote:

Excalibur wrote:
[snip]

Dicks crap rap trip notwithstanding...

frosty wrote:
As author of one of these raps, I can assure you that
_the_lyrics_ at least were not crap, and if Dick had
taken my advice and hired Humpty to perform them, you
would agree. IMO.

Luke Webber wrote:
Hmmm. I recollect a fragment of the lyrics. Something like...

"Zoomin', cruisin', double-clutchin' interface,
At the speed of light, the data's right there in your face!"

Sorry John, but I've definitely heard better. ;^)

That was not the one I authored.
Bet you can guess who did, though!

--
frosty

#49

Excalibur wrote:

Quote:

Hi
It was the UK arm and following my tirade I have had a rapid response that I
shall follow up as I too had a fond spot for Reality that was sadly dented
by the events mentioned. Also just to stir the pot a bit it is my opinion
that almost all GFE's were caused by bad programming. In particular pushing
items to a size greater than 32k.

Believe it or not, almost all the software derived GFE's turned out to
be in Proc, as John Lambert will attest to as he went through and got
rid of them ;-) They were there all the time and were mostly pointed
out once the code that released frames back to the system was changed
to point out that a frame was being doubly released.

Quote:

Where they were hardware based the reason
was obvious as the power was probably off and the lights had gone. My first
Reality ran for 9 years with nary a one.

Obviously didn't use a lot of PROC ;-)

Jim

#50

"dawn" wrote:

Quote:

...Cache' advertises with the technologies I was using last year
and I haven't noticed them in the AJAX/PHP space yet. That doesn't
mean they aren't there, but I think I'm quite typical and they used to
advertise to me and now they don't.

I have no idea but it's possible that they just target different
markets at different times - only so much marketing cash to toss
around. I still see them all over the rags I read, business and
technical - I haven't analyzed whether they're hitting the same rags
but they're still finding my eyeballs.

Quote:

Cache' is clearly in view of mainstream
business people and technical people alike....

It is s a shame that there is no MV company that gets in front of
customers that way. They all seem to take a VAR approach (Revelation
perhaps less than others). I'm hopeful that OpenQM can make a dent in
the direct-to-customer market.

I'm hoping to do this with jBASE VARs. My goal is to get a number of
VARs who are interested in doing some marketing, and co-op funds to
get their offering in front of their target audiences. I've mentioned
this over the years in these forums but no one seems interested in a
community approach, so I'm taking a more business approach to it.

Quote:

....jBASE has a unique position in that your app does
not run in a VM, if I understand it, but gets converted to C and runs
in the native environment. I feel like that should appeal to me, but
it doesn't really.

Not to start a holy war but I think that "no VM" mantra is a lot of
hooey that unnecessarily scares people off. jBASE has processes that
need to run to coordinate user activity, licenses, locks, etc. Call
them what you will but collectively they perform the function of a VM.
I think jBASE has done a dis-service to themselves by trying to
separate themselves so much from the MV market with this trivial
distinction while at the same trying to sell to the MV market. jBASE
is not running in a VM like D3 (which is heavily VM-centric) but it
makes no difference whatsoever - BASIC code opens files and reads and
writes dynamic arrays, that's what we need. Consider jBASE a sort of
extension to the host OS (Windows and *nix) in that it adds features
to make the host OS command line more friendly.

Quote:

For what it is worth and in case it is helpful, I was going to give
jBASE a spin a couple of years ago and didn't have a C compiler running
and didn't feel like messing with it.

Yup, lots of people have similar reasons for not going back to it or
"almost but not quite" checking it out - myself included. These
issues need to get less focus so that people can really see what the
software is about and get productive. I'm sure some jBASE VARs will
speak up here and confirm that such things are just bumps in the road,
not obstructions.

Quote:

Some would be interested to know that jBASE already allows MV code to
update other databases like relational _and_ Cache'. So your familiar
MV code can take advantage of that Cache' environment and the
marketing machine now, with no migration from MV required.

I gotta say that seems unnecessarily costly (soft & hard dollars) to
me.

What is the "that" part? Sorry.
Migration to Cache'?
Using BASIC in jBASE to tie into Cache'?

Quote:

Doesn't jBASE also distribute the product? If so, what do you offer
that the company named the same as the product does not?

jBASE International provides the jBASE DBMS and related products, both
directly to VARs and through Distributors like Nebula R&D. I can't
speak for other Distributors, but the value-add that I'm building into
Nebula R&D includes:
- for fee and for-free training
- migration and/or integration assistance
- how-to seminars and newsletters
- development and support for various functions and utilities
- co-op marketing, and other assistance with marketing
- assistance with technical sales to clients and new prospects
- assistance in finding qualified IT staff (through new relationships
as yet un-announced plus pre-screening services)
- discounts with other products sold and supported by Nebula R&D
- liaison assistance with jBASE Intl. and other vendors

All that and more, for the same price you'd pay the vendor directly.

Because of my personal experience, and resources and relationships
that I've developed with individuals and companies, Nebula R&D intends
to provide these and other unique offerings to companies that come on
board with us. It's not all together yet but so far we've come a long
way in a short time, and where there is demand there will be supply.
At worst, in the near term we'll be providing the same services that
are available by going with someone else, but with many more
possibilities for the long-term.

Thanks for asking.

Quote:

Tony
jbase@ removethisNebula-RnD .com

Cheers! --dawn