Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!das-news.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!MathWorks.Com!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!library.ucla.edu!agate!iat.holonet.net!dparker
From: DPARKER@HOLONET.NET
Subject: Re: GeODE & GemStone
Message-ID: <CxFxEK.5AG@iat.holonet.net>
Originator: dparker@orac.holonet.net
Sender: usenet@iat.holonet.net (USENET News System)
Nntp-Posting-Host: orac.holonet.net
Organization: HoloNet National Internet Access System: 510-704-1058/modem
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 1994 04:49:31 GMT
Lines: 51

Hi Todd.  By way of quick introduction... I'm a Smalltalk/Opal developer 
currently working with a long distance telco.  I've been working with ST/V 
and Opal for about one year now, and have been doing OO development for 
about six.  The projects I'm involved in are intended to eventually replace 
all of our mainframe and 4GL legacy systems.  We are two months away from 
our first production system and have one smallish prototype system in users 
hands right now.

t >Apparently, GemStone 4.0 documentation is supposed to be better.  I am 
t >ready next week to dig into it.

Documentation is *much* better, but 4.0 itself isn't quite ready for prime 
time - we've been using (and and will continue to use) 3.2.5 'til 4.0 gets 
kicked around a bit more.

4.0's most significant enhancements (aside from enhanced documentation) 
involve enhancements to memory management (and speed) on the host and more 
complete support for client Smalltalk (GSI) applications.  When it's ready 
it'll be very nice - for now, it's probably best to stay with 3.2.5 for 
production use.  Servio's migration facilities (when they do version 
upgrades) are very nice, so it's not a big issue save for the time involved 
to run it.

t >Does anyone have an opinion on how easy it is to learn GemStone?  Is it
t >to spend the $1500 for a GemStone course (or is it necessary)?

GemStone is a complex environment - IMHO the training is a requirement. 

The Smalltalk aspect of the thing is not a problem - Opal (Smalltalk DB in 
4.0) introduces a few syntactic and hierarchical differences (when compared 
to STV or PP) that are accomidated easily enough.

GemStone introduces some new twists to ST that just don't show up in a 
single user image type environment: changes to classes become more complex 
as you deal with the possibility of having multiple versions of a given 
class (and instances thereof), and the fact that the whole thing is 
multi-user adds lots of "extra color" ;).

Happily, you get training with the product when you purchase it - an 
intense week's worth.  

BTW it's a great environment to work with once you've learned the ropes.  
Aside from sidestepping the object-to-relational persistence mapping issue 
entirely, you get *significantly* higher transaction rates than such an 
environment can offer (so far it looks like by orders of magnitude).  It 
seems incredibly stable too:  we've been doing development on our current 
database for about six months now, and we've only crashed it once - by 
running out of disk space.

---
 * WR  [NR] * UNREGISTERED EVALUATION COPY
