I must agree with David's assessment. In the 10 years I've been actively
involved in managing HP3000 systems, I have only once encountered an anomaly in
the patching process - AUTOPAT or AUTOINST - which caused us a problem, and that
was a result of, in my opinion, sheer chance in the order in which the multiple
patches on that tape were installed. HP has been listening to us over the past
few years in our overall dissatisfaction with the way patches must be
identified, obtained and installed (witness the advent of Patch Manager/iX),
and, while I've done my share of *#$^)*-ing about patch installs, I've never had
to back one out! Good job, HP!
=======================================================================
Lee Gunter Voice: 503-375-4498
HMO Oregon FAX: 503-375-4401
PO Box 12625 E-Mail: [log in to unmask]
Salem, OR 97309 USA Private E-Mail: [log in to unmask]
=======================================================================
The opinions expressed, here, are mine and mine alone, and do not
necessarily reflect those of my employer.
______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: WHAT is going on here?
Author: David Randall <[log in to unmask]> at ~INTERNET
Date: 2/1/96 3:04 AM
Jon,
<snip>
> I don't know if this assures you; I hope it does. I'd be interested
> in feedback, especially from those who have experience with the
> quality of releases other than MPE/iX releases.
In these days of Microsoft shipping millions of copies of software with all
manner of "unresolved issues" I fail to see how QA at HP can be criticised
overly - as you rightly say, for every release there will be a problem with a
"gotcha" somewhere! - and has anyone played any recent PC CD ROM game releases,
these companies have redefined QA to be Quite Appalling.
More seriously in recent years I have read of Digital customers with
incompatible versions of Pathworks, Unix upgrades that don't etc. Surely most of
this (in the case of the reputable end of the business) is just a function of
the increasing complexity of software. To use an analogy - a good diver will
always swallow dive well, ask them to perform ever more intricate combinations
and they're going to make mistakes more often.
Apart from one or two small issues with early MPE/XL releases with system calls
being renamed, I have to commend HP on the small number of bugs around .... and
even more importantly the way they sort them out PDQ.
David Randall, Healthcall (UK) +44(1908)691919 Fx +44(1908)235096
EMail - 100126,[log in to unmask] - All opinions are mine and not my employers.
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