Re: What is the oldest community supported versions for PERL DBI and DBD::ORACLE?

On 23/01/12 15:36, TIDWELL, GARY wrote:
> Thanks for the quick response.
>
> Sounds like you've answered my question, but I will go ahead and
> explain my situation.
>
> We are using the old versions because we never had an issue or moved
> to a version of Perl or Oracle that needed us to change.  If we did
> we would have upgraded at that time.

Yes, quite a few people I know end up doing this but in the long run it can be a mistake. It is often easier (less work) to stay reasonably current than to have to leap loads of versions at once. In the corporate world where everything has to justified and risk assessed it can become hard to move.

> What has happened is corporate standards have changed - we have to
> have an exception to use DBD/DBI (which makes no sense to me because
> both Perl and Oracle are standard within the company).  The need for
> an exception has been true for years, but this year they want some
> proof of community support.  We are now moving to current versions
> because of this, but if we can't show proof of support we will have a
> gap until we can schedule &  test the upgrade.

I'm not sure how you are going to get "proof of support" depending on what that "proof" might be like. Even if you were on the most recent versions the only indication of any support is that rts are posted (rt.cpan.org) and some get fixed but I think whoever manages your corporate standards would probably explode if he saw the DBD::Oracle rt queue right now (there are 40 outstanding issues and some go back 5 years).

>
> Basically everything is still working great&  I anticipate no
> problems between now and the move to current versions, but corporate
> policies are making waves.
>
> And yes, they really should be paying for support, but that decision
> is made by people well above me.

There is more than one way to "pay". My job requires using DBD::Oracle and the things I work on would just stop if DBD::Oracle broke. As a result we have a vested interest in DBD::Oracle and I work on DBD::Oracle in part to ensure it does not break.  We always test our system with new releases of DBI and DBD::Oracle even if we don't upgrade to them immediately to ensure when we do there are no nasty surprises.

I'm not sure where you would go for DBI/DBD::Oracle paid support anyway.

> Thanks, Gary

Martin
-- 
Martin J. Evans
Easysoft Limited
http://www.easysoft.com

> -----Original Message----- From: Martin J. Evans
> [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, January 23, 2012
> 9:14 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: What is the oldest
> community supported versions for PERL DBI and DBD::ORACLE?
>
> On 23/01/12 14:13, TIDWELL, GARY wrote:
>> Hi all, we are currently using DBD::ORACLE 1.16 and DBI 1.46, and
>> I'm having a tough time trying to determine if either of these are
>> still supported by the open source community.
>>
>> All help is appreciated.
>>
>> Thanks, Gary
>>
>>
>>
>
> DBI 1.46 isn't even on cpan now - it has been moved to backpan. It
> was released 16 Nov 2004 and has been superseded by 19 releases on
> CPAN.
>
> DBD::Oracle 1.16 was released 22 Oct 2004 and has been superseded by
> 23 releases.
>
> So you are using 7 year code both of which has moved on a lot since
> then.
>
> I help out with both of those modules and if you had a problem with
> either of them that old my response would likely be to upgrade.
> However, it depends on what you mean by "support" - what do you
> mean?
>
> Presumably because you are using really old perl modules either a)
> the code was written ages ago or b) you need to use a really old
> version of Perl newer DBI and DBD::Oracle modules no longer support?
> If it is (a) then so long as you don't change anything why would you
> need support? If it is (b) and you seriously cannot move to a newer
> Perl you've got the same problem with Perl itself.
>
> With DBD::Oracle, the latest version is so different from the one you
> are using (code-wise) I doubt even if you found a bug which was still
> present in the newest release you'd persuade anyone to also fix it in
> 1.16.
>
> Perhaps you need to explain why you've asked the question.
>
> Martin