[Zope-DB] DCOracle2 on AIX5.2 -- issues

[mfmorss at aep.com]

>Obviously, your compiler does not like thing (to be precise:
>the implicit conversion between "short" and "unsigned short")
>that the author did not expect to hurt compilers (and which
>most compilers accept).
>
>Your options:
>
>  *  use a different (less strict) compiler
>
>  *  fix the code (such that even your strict compiler feels happy).

Thanks for that observation.  However, we are not interested in DCOracle2
for a research project on a $1,000 Linux box, but for critical, daily
industrial production on a $500,000 AIX server.  For reliability's sake, we
really have to trust our native AIX compiler (xlc) which, indeed, was able
to compile Python 2.4 itself with no trouble.  It would seem that if Python
is able to compile on AIX, DCOracle2 should be also.  And gcc would be a
big piece of software to maintain just to get DCOracle2 to compile (and
should we also recompile Python?).

If you fix someone's C code, you really have to wonder if you did it
correctly, and you also have to wonder if the next release will contain
code that is even more difficult to fix.  In short, you can hardly trust
software for industrial use if you have to patch it by hand.

I posted originally about these C issues because I assumed it would be
advantageous to Zope if its various parts could be installed whereever
Python could, and that the developers would therefore take some interest in
my troubles.  If they don't, we will probably just look for an alternative
Python interface to Oracle.  That would be too bad because DCOracle2 does
seem to work in spite of the compiler complaints, and it seems quite nice
to use.

Mark F. Morss
Principal Analyst, Market Risk
American Electric Power