Re: FAQ (Was Permissions on Informix)

> > >From: <name deleted to protect the guilty> > > > >Hmm, > >I never thought about that. > > >Of course all customers are members of group informix. > > They WHAT!!!!!!!! SHRIEK! YOU CAN'T DO THAT! YOU MUST NOT DO THAT! > > Pause, for a deep breath, and to give me time to scrape myself off the > ceiling... > > 1... 2... 3... 4... 5... 6... 7... 8... 9... 10! > Happy thoughts John, Happy Thoughts! [ John going to great length describing the hows and whys of Informix permissions. ] Well, this sounds like a good little FAQ entry to me. I continue to find Informix installations where all of the development is done in the informix directory, etc. Absolute nightmare. WRT the FAQ, I've found that a lot of FAQs not only be useful for "(NOT) Stupid Questions", but just arcane knowledge. If anything, they are good for "Infrequently asked questions" "Ya know, Bob Eubanks did that exact same thing last year, and figured it out...drop him a line (not that I know his address, or if he still lives...Ya, know, haven't seen much of Bob recently)" It's hard to qualify some of this stuff, and some of it has the problem of getting out dated, but I can see as things get MORE complex, we're going to bump into more little things that stop people cold. A current classic case (IMHO) is getting PC's hooked up to I-NET. I haven't tried recently, but when I played with it and HS Tools 6 months ago, it was a nightmare. Mostly because I-NET is completely silent and there is no way to know it is working without firing up your application. So, when it DOESN'T work, is it a networking problem? TCPIP Driver? I-NET Version? Server Misconfigured? Application Broken? It can be ANY of those things, yet hardly any parts of the process can give you any information why it's not working. And, when it's all set up nice and proper, it Just Works, and you ask yourself "Now, what did I do to get it to work?" I'm sure other folks have had better initial exposure to I-NET than I. Anyway, a FAQ can be a repository for such tidbits. I like MEGA FAQs. Huge document of "How To" tricks, "By the ways", "Betcha Didn't Knows" and what not. They're also great places to document the "Undocumented" stuff. Of course, some may say I should just archive the group and 'grep' to my hearts content. :-) Here are some recent blurbs that seem suitable: The Trigger/Stored Procedure trick for updating the mod user/mod time. The ever popular "INPUT ARRAY" sucks topics. (Yes, we know. Here some hints). Striping? That was popular. A little note that it seems to work, try it if you can, YMMV. Undocumeted SQL functions. Screen Print "feature" (DBSCREENOUT???). Sometimes questions aren't frequently asked, because there may be faster turn around beating your head against the wall for a day than waiting for the net to respond. Typically, those incidents may not be shared, and not asked. So, anyway, just some more Food for FAQ... Will (villy@collinscomp.com)