SAWMILLFORUM

I should mention in passing that SQL Log Source is available to the adventurous programmer -- all you need to do is write a script which accesses the SQL server, and dumps the log data from there to the standard output stream, formatted as W3C data (like the text logs IIS normally generates). Then use that script as a Command log source, and you've implemented the feature. When we implement it, we'll probably integrate it into Sawmill, but for now it can be done manually if you have SQL and scripting experience.

However, MS SQL as Backend Database is much, much harder. We're still tuning and fixing our MySQL implementation, and it would be somewhat foolhardy of us to begin implementing another database before that's done. I think we're pretty close on that -- we're doing one last revision to the scheme and we'll probably lock it down and turn our attention to Oracle, or maybe MS SQL.

Oracle was the "natural" next step for us after MySQL because it seems to be the industry standard for a Enterprise database, and SQL is currently available only in Sawmill Enterprise. But given the amount of interest in MS SQL, I'm wondering if we would be better to implement that first. We don't have much of an idea how hard either will be -- in theory, they should be easy, because we already have all the SQL queries put together as part of the MySQL implementation, so it should just be a matter of dealing with the different connection types, and tuning the syntax for the differences between servers. But in practice, I think it will be much harder than it sounds. I'm going to open up an internal conversation on this again, to see if MS SQL might really be the best choice for our "second" database.

The To Do List is an internal list which we maintain -- we don't currently have a public version. Roughly speaking when the first person requests a feature, we add it to the list (which is about 300 items long right now), and give it priority 1. Additional requests bump the priority up by two, so it goes 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 (I'm not sure why it goes by two...). Once it passes 9, priority is set to 10 and in theory we implement it in the next major release. To continue to gauge interest, we keep bumping the number up as more requests arrive, to 11, 12, etc. For comparison, there are 13 priority-10 items, six priority-11 items, two priority-12 items, and nothing above that, except for MS SQL, which is now priority-16. The expected difficulty of the feature makes me reluctant to consider it in Sawmill 7 -- it seems like the sort of thing that should really be in v8 -- but we'll see what's possible.

I should mention that we do have an official "pay-for-priority" policy where in theory, *any* feature can be requested for immediate implementation, for a fee. A feature of this magnitude would have a king-sized pay-for-priority fee, and still would take months to implement, but if some's just DYING to see this in Sawmill, and has some cash to burn making their dream come true, email me at ferrar@flowerfire.com and I'll put together a quote. Maybe you could all chip in....