Re: [zigzag] Re: [zigzag] Re: [zigzag] Re: :zz: Edward Prentice' problem

[Peter Barus <ViPr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hey, Zigzaggers,

I don't know if this means anything to us in the Zigworld, but an
interesting development has happened in another part of the computer
industry where I make my daily.

Superbase, the oldest database in Windows, went belly up a couple of years
back, and was picked up by a group of developers who loved the product.
They rescued it from total oblivion, and kept working on it. Now they've
done something a little extraordinary.

It seems that now (well, in Janurary when they roll it out) you can use it
as a client, or a server, or both at once, so, as the fellow in charge of
marketing says, "you wouldn't know your front end from your back end."

This means a database system with various lists of stuff no longer cares
where those lists are located, as long is there is any connection from PC
to PC, including internet protocols. BUT, it doesn't use browsers, or
servers, or any kind of "middleware". It's as if the thing were on a LAN.

They will be needing something in the way of language or linguistics in
order to be able to tell this to people and be heard, or show it and be
seen, you know? I've already tried to explain this to a guy high up in a
big corporation, who used the word "oh-de-be-cee" as if it were not an
acronym, and he clearly had not the least hint what the letters stood for,
and he was in charge of their internet business.

Why should you be interested in this? I don't know, but I'm busy trying to
figure out how to talk about it and make sense. Sort of like some other
things we know about...

Peter