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"Fairly well known to go to absurd lengths to [maintain backward compatibility]" | 86 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
"Fairly well known to go to absurd lengths to [maintain backward compatibility]"
Authored by: Tyro on Friday, August 17 2012 @ 03:54 PM EDT
In the specific case of MSAccess, I experienced their "promised"
compatibility. It lead to crashes in the older version.

In specific, if I opened the old version of the database in the new version of
MSAccess without changing it, and then copied it over to another machine that
still had the older version, the older version would crash irreparably within a
week. The only way around this that I discovered was to export the database as
text from the new system, and import the text into the older system. Using
custom programs that I wrote to export all the relevant data, and nothing else,
and similar routines to handle the import. IIRC I wrote those routines in
SmartEiffel (not sure what the name was then, and it's not the language
currently using that name). C would have worked, but Eiffel was a lot faster to
write.

It's been over a decade, but I still wouldn't put ANY trust in a Microsoft claim
of compatibility. They seem to INTENTIONALLY break things where they think you
won't notice or care, but sufficiently that an upgrade of all systems is coerced
if you upgrade any of them (or buy a new system).

If you don't find that sufficient reason to avoid them, I suggest actually
reading their EULA.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

  • Ouch! - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, August 19 2012 @ 12:05 AM EDT
Again, that's forward not backward compatibility
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, August 17 2012 @ 06:53 PM EDT
Word N/Access N etc still read N-2's files fine (usually).

But Word N-2 doesn't necessarily open Word N's files (just because they're both
.doc doesn't mean the format is identical - the OLE container format they used
to use is *hideous*). That's forward compatibility and you should *never* rely
on an MS product being anything of the sort.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

The real test
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, August 21 2012 @ 03:22 PM EDT
Has MS ever produced a new version of anything that didn't force a new format of
some type into the mix? The game is to make the new format the default and not
usable by the previous versions. Welcome to the lock-in business model.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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