First of all, let me apologize for the tone of yesterday's message. Avi and Goran (and others) have been working hard to make the simplest thing that could possibly work, work. And my message would probably seem to say "screw the work you're doing". And that was not my intent, and I apologize for sending such a negative vibe.
Cees de Groot wrote:
Travis Griggs tgriggs@keyww.com said:
This (to me) is a huge tragedy. I'm a bit more guarded about Store than you (as a hardcore user); I'd say Store is in the process of becoming cool.
Why am I not hardcore? My company depends on it - is that hardcore enough? ;-)
Sorry Cees, I wasn't trying to imply that you weren't hardcore, your evaluation of Store is as every bit valid as mine is.
Coming from where I came - Java, CVS - StORE is very cool.
Bottom line, why not just target the Squeak stuff at a PostgreSQL database.
That'd be nice. However, Cincom didn't exactly go through great lengths to make StORE interoperable: the code is closed, the database dictionary is undocumented, and there's no apparent process to change StORE; everything is heavily dependent on VW's concepts (packages, namespaces) which are quite like, but probably completely incompatible with, Squeak's ideas on these topics.
Now this seems a bit unfair. I have heard pleas at various times from various Cincom employees to at least consider Store, or something close to it, for other Smalltalks. Moreover, I know that there is no one single person sitting there saying "no". The database dictionaries are as documented as anything in Squeak (i.e. via the code itself). As for packages, namespaces, I dunno.
Unless StORE gets open sourced or there is a similar agreement that puts both 'players' (Cincom, the Squeak community) on a level field, I think it's a tempting, but bad, idea.
You may be right.