On Friday 23 November 2001 11:26 am, Paul Schmidt wrote:

> But suppose you spec'd the system, and every machine has a
> 100baseT ethernet card, and they are all connected to a 100baseT
> hub, using Cat-5e cable, and you know this is the situation, then
> again you can bend the rules slightly, and it's still not a problem.

Doesn't even need to be at all that high of specs. Even just specifying that
its a local network using 10baseT means you have enough throughput for all
that is required. The amount of data going over the wire for a customer
invoice is really measured in hundreds or maybe a few thousand bytes. By no
means do you need multi-megabyte networks to push that amount of data through
quickly.

> The real idea here, is that there are complex methods of
> maintaining an auditable series, and there are simple methods, so
> if you know a simple one will work with what your doing, why use a
> complex method.

My argument though is that there is a really simple way to get an auditable
series of numbers that works, is platform independent, and can be easily
tuned for the level of locking desired. I mean the code for this is 60 lines
of C++ code including comments, blank lines, and error handling! Its not
complex! Its certainly not good for all applications (if you open a
transaction at the beginning of a user data entry session and don't close it
till the end for example my code would be a really poor idea) but for where
it does work, it works very well and is not even slightly complex.

--
Brad Pepers
brad@...