Re: [GNUe] GNUe in actual production use?

[Joost Helberg]

Reinhard,

>>>>> "Reinhard" == Reinhard Mueller <address@hidden> writes:
 > Date: Mon, 09 Oct 2006 10:30:18 +0200

 > Hi, Joost!

 > Thank you for your feedback!

 > Am Montag, den 09.10.2006, 09:33 +0200 schrieb Joost Helberg:
 >> GNUe works fine, but I won't let non-technical colleagues use it
 >> because of the cumbersome interface.

 > Could you please be more verbose about this?

Sure, it's partly due to my quick-win application programming skills
of course.
But one of the most frequent issues users have using GNUe is the
presumably wrong order of sequences for searching.

Most people start typing and press `search' for searching. The fact
that GNUe expects the user to first think (hit search button) and then
put the search string in is counter intuitive.
This problems is made worse by an issue with the search-toggle button
which is active sometimes without being in search-mode.

The comboboxes don't allow SQL wild-cards. The user in search-mode is
then confronted with a Python stack-backtrace!

I use some master-detail forms and there is no (to my limited
knowledge) standard way to create rows referring to a newly created
master-row automatically. This means that after creating a
master-record, a query must be performed in order to get the
detail-records point to the right master. After that, new
detail-records can be added.
Of course this can be solved with some kind of trigger, but this case
is so general, it should be dealt with automatically.


 >> There are lots of upgrade issues by the way which stop production once
 >> in a while. I didn't upgrade since common 0.5.14 and forms 0.5.11.

 > In case you hit any problems when updating which seem to be a bug, we
 > would very much appreciate any kind of bug report, be it a mail to this
 > list, an entry in our bug tracker, or a message on IRC.

I used to have a 64-bit notebook for a while, this stopped me from
using GNUe as it had 64-bit compatibility problems (logged as a bug).

But the real upgrades issues are a bit more serious.

GNUe doesn't handle default values of attributes which are handled by
the database server.
This means that only upon saving and re-querying a record, the default
values appear. It is possible of course to automatically query default
values and make them appear in the form.

In my datamodel I use an attribute `id' as a general purpose
reference. This means that all relations are in terms of an attribute
containing the id of the row referring to.
This id is automatically generated and not part of any user-editable
form.
Since one of the more recent versions of GNUe all my forms stopped
working as the value of the id was used for re-querying the record. As
the GNUe-forms known value of id is null, the re-query fails.
I wonder why all attributes of a row are used for re-querying?
Especially in case one or more keys are known, this is not
necessary. In case of PostgreSQL every insert returns an oid for
re-query use, I'm sure other servers do something similar.

There were some other issues, I'll replay them as soon as I have some
spare time.

GNUe still is the best solution around, so I'm not really complaining :-)) 

 >> I tried to join the documentation group once, but I was impressed by
 >> the amount of 4-letter words on IRC and dropped out of course.

 > I'm sorry to hear this. Personally, I have experienced an extremely
 > friendly and cooperative communication style in IRC among the GNUe
 > developers. If anybody ever has offended you, please take my apologies
 > for this. One of the reasons for such things happening might be that
 > many people in the IRC channel are non-native English speakers, and
 > sometimes use words that don't really fit what they want to express.

 > Anyway, I must say that still every contribution is welcome, be it
 > constructive feedback, bug reports, documentation, or code. The thought
 > that we've been unfriendly against any potential contributor really
 > hurts me.

Nobody was unfriendly with me, the conversations I saw just weren't
about GNUe. This was the beginning of 2004.

Joost

 > Thanks,
 > -- 
 > Reinhard Mueller
 > GNU Enterprise project (http://www.gnuenterprise.org)

-- 
Joost Helberg
Snow B.V.        http://snow.nl Tel 0418-653333 Fax 0418-653666