bb.donnay-software.com

I work with Bobby Drakos on a variety of projects and over the years I have seen a noticeable increase in reliability of Xbase++ applications, especially with build 355 (SL1) and the latest patches.

I wrote a service system for him a few years ago that must run 24/7 on a 2008 server. It shares DLLs with his Medallion system and it performs a variety of tasks:

1. Sends out all emails created by the Medallion system.
2. Connects every day to a bank service via SFTP to upload deposit transactions.
3. Downloads and processes suspension list files from government websites every day to check on suspended drivers and licenses.
4. Runs a scheduler that executes a variety of programs on a routine basis.
5. Performs database and directory cleanup tasks every day.
6. More ....

This is an Xbase++/eXpress++ program that has 10 threads running at all times to accomplish all of these tasks and log the results. I noticed today that the program has been running for 125 days with no restart or system reboot. In my opinion, Xbase++ has earned its place as not only a robust language but also a very reliable language. It reminds me of Clipper 5.2e in that regard.

It's obvious at this point that I am biased , not only to Alaska but to Roger's work and my own.
But I want to add something to this as well.

The service and program not only run reliably, but it executes everything very quickly.
Solid code running 24/7 with no known errors.
The program portion for some workstations runs from the server and for others, locally using the server only for data access.
In either case, performance is comparable.
From the remote locations, execution is done via Citrix.
In other's, terminal server.

Considering our biggest database was over 20 gigs with millions of records handled by ADS with no performance or speed issues, I must say I am very happy with this language.
But more importantly, eXpress has made this all very possible.
And even more importantly, Roger has made express possible.
I would say that I find him the most reliable.