From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,8ae637be9dba997 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 109fba,8ae637be9dba997 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public From: gabrielb@rational.com (Gabriel Bereny) Subject: Re: IDE/Rational Apex experiences Date: 1997/11/11 Message-ID: <64a8tp$lro$1@rational2.rational.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 289438676 References: <6429gb$5qh@dfw-ixnews12.ix.netcom.com> Followup-To: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c++ Organization: Rational Software Corporation Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c++ Date: 1997-11-11T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: bklungle (bklungle@ix.netcom.com) wrote: : At a certain large AeroSpace company, use of Rational Apex was mandated by : management. There are 27 programmers trying to develop a very large ground : based processing system using C and C++. When 4 users log onto the Rational : Apex system, the response time on the network increases to around 20 : minutes. The system HAS been optimized about as much as the Gurus know how. : At this time, there is a pending uprising within the working staff to : eliminate it. Instead of a productivity improvement, it has brought : development to a standstill. Almost everyone would rather go back to SCCS : than continue with Apex. : One users experience over the past 11 months. Mr. Klungle does not specify anything regarding the hardware on which his company is running Apex, nor about the network configuration, nor about what sorts of operations are being performed on the system. I'm not doubting the veracity of his statement that things are slow or that the system has been optimized "as much as the gurus know how". But still we are left with questions about the precise nature of the system abd the operations. If Rational Apex is installed on a single IPC with 64 MB of RAM and 4 users access Apex using PCs running some xterm emulation software as displays and rlogins to the IPC to run Apex, I have no doubt that response will be miserable. Note that this still fits in with the information that Mr. Klungle supplies. The system described is not what one would recommend, but it may well be "optimized" as much as it can be. We in Rational technical support have run six, seven, and more sessions of Apex on a single server (first a SPARCstation 10, now an UltraSPARC 2) using other SPARCs as displays many times over the past few years and have never seen "response time on the network increase to around 20 minutes" (whatever that statement may mean). If Mr. Klungle claims that his company has a proper hardware and network setup and that response time for an arbitrary operation (again, there's no clue about what operations he's discussing) is 20 minutes, then I would have to doubt that the system is optimized or that the operation to which he is referring is "normal". "Not normal" might include checking back into a library a 400,000 line file in which every other line has been changed. I agree that Apex is large and slower than something like SCCS. On the other hand, Apex does a heck of a lot more than SCCS, than vi, than ... There's no free lunch. Increased functionality requires larger amounts of space and large executables require more resources to run. This is certainly not a quality unique to Apex. If the current resources are strained even though they have been optimized, then more resources are needed. This is the way of the world in the computer business. Rational didn't make it this way but neither can Rational change this immutable fact. If the management of "large AeroSpace company" bought Rational Apex strictly as a replacement for SCCS, I'd be surprised. If SCCS is all that is needed, the working staff has a legitimate gripe about the response time. But I think that time griping and waiting for system response would be better spent presenting a case to the management that if they expect software tools to increase productivity, then they must invest in some hardware as well. Gabriel Bereny Rational Software Corporation Technical Support