Subject: Re: Miro

From: [email-masked] (Jean Anderson)
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 93 15:33:30 PDT

[email-masked] (David Rich 617/873-2634) writes:
> I'm not sure if this question is out of bounds for this mailing list,
> but;  are there any users of Miro out there?

[email-masked] (Lou D. Langholtz) writes:
> Me to. Thanks!

Yes, there are Miro users out there. 

Back in June I posted a note describing what I knew about Miro from looking 
at the beta docs. I also invited folks to ping me once I had been actually
using it.  With many pings filling up my active mbox, this is a great time 
to reply to all pings with a single pong.

[A side note to any vendors reading this: please keep the occasional mention 
of other products in perspective.  I like you all. :-) ]

My main focus has been on libmiro; once I have hooks in place for our 
existing applications, I'll tackle the snazzy Miro features.

Specific notes (mostly libmiro):
===============================

   o Connect services:
     - Multiple concurrent connects work fine and I haven't encountered any 
       collisions yet running side by side with Postgres, Oracle, and Sybase.
     - You can associate your own programmatic "thingy", whatever that might 
       be, with a specific miro connection (very handy).
     - Other little touches show nice forethought, such as a function that 
       returns the version of libmiro.

   o Error handling: 
     - Services are outstanding, more flexible than any other product we use.

   o Concurrency control: 
     - Everybody wants to know about deadlock management, of course. :-)  
       It's easy to detect deadlock so you can properly retry.
     - You can also set the timeout (nice!). I found when I reduced the 
       timeout to 10 seconds, I had trouble getting collisions to occur on 
       my concurrency test; it wasn't until I had 6-8 concurrent processes 
       whacking away at the same resource that they'd deadlock. I took the
       concurrency test up to 10 and had no problems.  This was an important 
       milestone for my more anxious users.

   o Query management: 
     - Query results handling is work-in-progress (stay tuned).  So far it 
       looks good.

   o Docs (warning -- inbound flames):
     - Surprisingly accurate for such a new product. I found fewer doc errors 
       than in Oracle's docs, and none of them were any big deal.
     - Like Sybase, and unlike Oracle (#$@!), Miro documents known problems 
       up front.

   o Support: 
     - One of the advantages of being in a small user base so far is you get 
       swift, technically excellent responses.
     - Training is similarly impressive; the instructor is more technically 
       knowledgeable than what I have experienced with other vendors.

So far I haven't hit up against anything that I felt I couldn't live with;
in fact quite the opposite.

These are just my opinions, not my employer's, etc. etc.

regards,

 -jean

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Jean Anderson, DBA                       email:  [email-masked]    |
| SAIC Open Systems Division, MS A2-F                                   |
| 10210 Campus Point Drive                 phone:  (619)458-2727        |
| San Diego, CA  92121                       fax:  (619)458-4993        |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| #ifdef MIRO                                                           |
|        return disclaimer('mine');                                     |
| #elif  ORACLE                                                         |
|        execute disclaimer(opinion => 'mine');                         |
| #elif  POSTGRES                                                       |
|        retrieve (opinion=disclaimer("mine"))                          |
| #elif  SYBASE                                                         |
|        execute disclaimer @opinion="mine"                             |
| #endif                                                                |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+