Posted by jim guerber on April 29, 2004 at 11:27:06:
Thank You
I would like to express my sincerest thanks to all of you who subscribed to Comet in the last several months. It is my pledge that our subscribers will get the highest priority in tech support.
At the present time we will keep to our old policy of making Comet versions in order to separate major development features, but those of you who have subscribed will get the opportunity to try the newest Comet features before any others.
As I look back on the various versions of Comet, I notice “themes”. Each version extended Comet’s “capability space” in some major direction.
• The theme for Comet98 was the transition from DOS to Windows as the underlying platform.
• Comet2000 was all about the Internet and XAP and the eComet Web extensions.
• Comet2002 introduced the ODBC connectivity features of Comet to allow programs to read and write SQL data.
• The theme of Comet2003 was “DataExpress”. It provided an interface to Microsoft Excel and Crystal Reports in a way that integrated these two products into your Comet system.
• Comet 2004 completely opened up the Comet File system with CFAM. Using the CometLib interface, virtually ANY outside programming language could use the full capabilities of the Comet File System.
Many of you have asked “How can you accomplish such major development so quickly?” The answer is that each release is actually composed of programs that take many years to develop. CFAM as a case in point has been in existence for about five years. It was in live testing on our own machines for two years before its release. So, you see, our development tasks are compartmentalized in such a way that we work on a capability for several years before it is ready for “release”. Each piece of new development is inspired by some suggestion, frustration, or idea usually from several members of the Comet team (you are a team member if you are reading this!).
So, the question now is: What should we do for Comet2005? There are several possibilities:
• Expand our file system capabilities to allow larger keys in keyed files.
• Rewrite the Comet Utilities to give them a Windows look and feel.
• Expand the IB language to allow larger memory space for programs, unlimited string lengths etc.
Each of these themes is possible. The development work on each of them has been going on for several years. All that is needed is to “flesh them out” to make them into real products.
What do you think? I would like your thoughts. I can expand on any of the above if you like.