RE: SQL vs. traditional I/O?

["Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: Smith, Dave
> 
> I'm interested in your new IAAI site but wonder if it is going to take
> this type of discussion away from Midrange-L?

There are a couple of reasons I think a forum may be better than a
mailing list for this kind of stuff:

1. Forums are better for storing and transferring source code and test
data.  Mailing lists are notoriously poor for attachements, and for good
reason.  You really don't want to send kilobytes or even megabytes of
code and data to people who aren't even interested in the argument.  No,
I think a pull environment is better for this sort of stuff.

2. Forums are better for organizing discussions.  I hope that we'll be
able to have some structure to our ongoing debates.  I'd like to be able
to create topics like Security, and let those spin off subtopics like
User Profiles and Object Authority, whose results are eventually posted
back to the main topic.

3. Forums allow collating and summarizing.  While it's nice to search
the Midrange-L archives for information on a topic, I hope that the IAAI
forum will be more organized, especially in the Public forums section.
Forums are inherently pretty stable and with a little care can be nearly
permanent.  My ultimate goal is to be able to have a place where we can
have lively discussion and debate on specific issues which lead to real
tests with real data, that can then be summarized into easy-to-access
documents for those who are trying to make decisions and simply don't
have the time to write the tests themselves that will cut through all
the hype.

Joe