Re[2]: Re[2]: Database design goals...

["John C. Peterson" <jcp eskimo com>]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2001 at 05:36:01PM -0500, mike_phillips urscorp com wrote:
> >I agree absolutely.  The "keep it simple" rule should be adhered
> >to.  Installing fplan should involve no more than putting a few
> >files into the user's path, or doing a simple "make install".
> 
> KISS is a good idea, but a user already has to download the NASD files, 
> run avdbtools, etc. etc.

  I've always had the impression that most users just download
the fplan formatted files. Let me try to put on my "objective
and impartial" hat by presenting some actual data. Here is a
summary of the hits on various fplan components from the apache
server logs on the fplan web site (from 1 Jan, 2001 to now);

fplan-1.4.2-1.i386.rpm        618
fplan-1.4.2-1.src.rpm         251
fplan-1.4.2.i386.tar.Z        257
fplan-1.4.2.i386.tar.bz2      260
fplan-1.4.2.i386.tar.gz       286
fplan-1.4.2.src.tar.Z         257
fplan-1.4.2.src.tar.bz2       273
fplan-1.4.2.src.tar.gz        332
                             ----
                             2534

avdbtools-0.3.i386.tar.Z       63
avdbtools-0.3.i386.tar.bz2     61
avdbtools-0.3.i386.tar.gz      51
avdbtools-0.3.src.tar.Z        70
avdbtools-0.3.src.tar.bz2      78
avdbtools-0.3.src.tar.gz      114
                             ----
                              437

   Actually, I'm a little surprised. It's been awhile since
I checked any stats. The downloads of avdbtools has picked up
*considerably* since the support for the NASD CD-ROM was added
(from almost nothing before that). Anyhow, you can see that many
users still don't want to bother with the official databases and
just use the fplan db files (even though they are long expired!).
My e-mail traffic also supports this; 3 or 4 e-mails total about
avdbtools vs maybe 4-5 per month on fplan...

Regards, John

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