Re: ETA for LSMB 1.3 production?

[Luke <..hidden..>]

But I don't think you answered the implied question: how likely is there 
to be a safe data migration path, once production versions are available?  
(Or beta versions, for that matter?)
I have not followed the list very closely in recent months, so if you have 
made a definitive statement on that I apologize.

If we are reasonably sure that there will be one, then the willingness to 
take those risks may go down significantly.  It would for me, at any rate, 
although the lack of invoice printing is a killer for me (unless print to 
PDF is possible, which I doubt).

Regards,

Luke
 
On Sat, 27 Jun 2009, Chris Travers wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 10:30 PM, Stroller
> <..hidden..>wrote:
> 
> >
> > >> On 27 Jun 2009, at 00:51, Chris Travers wrote:
> > >>
> > >> I have a client with a 1.2.18 install but with only about 2-dozen
> > >> entries.  I could easily have those reentered into 1.3 if 1.3 is
> > >> considered stable enough.
> > >>
> > >
> > > Well, if this was important to do, my suggestion would be to do so
> > > along with a support contract and consultation as to what exactly
> > > would be needed to make it work for the business.
> >
> > I imagine the concern might be over migration to 1.3 in the future.
> >
> > I think you've said at least once that it's not certain whether safe
> > migration of data from 1.2 will be possible - that it may be better to
> > start a new database from scratch (at the beginning of a financial
> > year?) when adopting 1.3.
> 
> 
> Well there are cases where 1.3 is better for some users at the moment than
> 1.2.  The things that work, work well.  The things that don't work yet don't
> work at all.
> 
> The use case for this is where either heavy integration is required (and
> human oversight over that integration is important), where the transactional
> volume is very high, or where separation of duties is required....
> 
> AND
> 
> where interactions with customers using the software is minimal (i.e. check
> printing works, but I don;t think that other transactions print cleanly at
> the moment).  For example, invoice printing is currently not working.
> 
> The areas which work are fairly well tested.  The areas which don't work
> usually error out cleanly.
> 
> 
> >
> >
> > I would imagine that, if this is the case, there will be a strong
> > temptation for new users to adopt 1.3 "before it's ready". This may
> > not be advisable, perhaps, but it is understandable.
> 
> 
> Well, my job here is to provide what information may be needed so that folk
> can decide whether or not this is the way they want to go.  My current
> recommendation is to consult with my business FIRST, and discuss support
> options.  The fact is that while in a few cases it may be preferable to work
> with this software while it is in development, this is a VERY different
> process from working with production versions, and failure to follow these
> processes carefully can result in severe problems.  Such approaches require
> much more cooperation with developers, awareness of what business processes
> are relied on, etc.  Furthermore, in some cases, it may be preferable to
> merely backport a few things from 1.3 to 1.2 rather than moving to a system
> under active development.
> 
> However, if 1.2 works reasonably well for you, then it would be a mistake to
> migrate before 1.3.0 is released.
> 
> Best Wishes,
> Chris Travers
>