Email - see below - the web site is currently at an advanced stage of unreadiness.
Living in the most beautiful part of the UK (opinions vary): Dedham Vale, Suffolk [L1 ], with Sue (libraries) [L2 ] and sometimes student offspring Sam (digital cinema) [L3 ] and Jo (TV and radio production).
Programming since 1970 {![clock seconds]!}, still not rich nor famous, but no plans to stop. Tcl user since 7.6, no plans to stop that either. Serious long-term lurker at this wiki, the best resource a language could have - thanks to all for all the free help.
Currently (April 2003) working as a long term freelancer for British Telecommunications Laboratories, Martlesham Heath on network monitoring and management [L4 ], for the British Home Office on monitoring Rehabilitation Programmes [L5 ], and for the Alcohol Education and Research Council [L6 ] on paperwork reduction - you have to have at least two jobs in the UK these days.
Also rapidly becoming very interested indeed in 802.11 combined community networking and broadband provision, and involved through local pressure group SSBB. [L7 ]
Technically mainly trying to continue working in design and Oracle SQL, C, C++, Tcl and (whisper it) VB, mainly succeeding so far. Occasionally worrying about not knowing any of the above properly, nor Java, Perl, Python, Ruby, Scheme, C#, .Net... even slightly, yet. Always happy to be paid to learn though :)
Claiming one minuscule right to Tcl fame, having invented ClarifyScript, a C++ bolt-on for Tcl to let it talk to a Clarify CRM (oops, now Nortel, oops, now Amdocs [L8 ]) object database - the audience is currently three projects at BT Exact, who have kindly allowed it to become public, and their several hundred users at BT network operation units.
Now also claiming proud authorship of a 10-line Tcl program to set your PC's clock from an NTP server: see the '"Network Time Protocol - NTP" elsewhere in this wiki.
Reminiscing for a moment: anyone involved with Acorn BBC Micro home computing (6502@2MHz) in the early 1980s may remember me as one quarter of SoftMachinery, fabulous furry Prestel pioneers whose bits went 75 per second in one direction and 1200 in the other. Prestel was a quite brilliant precursor to the web, invented by Sam Fedida at BT Labs when BT was still the Post Office [L9 ], much beloved by UK travel agents, and completely eclipsed as soon as HTTP arrived.
But we did get to be Essex MUD wizards [L10 ] and to love a beautiful witch [L11 ] along the way [L12 ].
We were our own digital publishers and journalists at the gnotorious Home Of The Gnome [L13 ], both on Prestel (*258192# - error: gno carrier), and as a Prestel-like 6-line community bulletin board.
Along with our collaborators, we invented a few quite amazing things that never made any money whatsoever.
One of the partners' previous companies was called Belder, which in hindsight probably explains a lot. Speaking of which, we invented Danny O'Brien too [L14 ].
Scattered to the winds in the 90s by recession and the rising price of Nike trainers, SoftMachinery is pursuing rather more stable employment these days, although none of us has stopped inventing so far as I can tell.
ClarifyScript
This will only make any sense to dedicated Clarifiers (if them :). Possibly this could be a model for other object database packages, but really, SQL is still the best way to access a database. ClarifyScript is a shell for the Clarify Low-Level C API (LLAPI).
proc SubcaseStateTransition {id_number newstate} {
#### sets subcase state to newstate (a valid Open global string) with all the trimmings
global env
transaction {
set now [sysdate]
set subcase [find subcase id_number $id_number] ;# default [find the ...] for exactly one object, or error
set user [find user login_name $env(CLARIFY_USER1)] ;# current user's login_name
set oldstatus [find via $subcase subc_casests2gbst_elm] ;# follow a relation to find current status string object
set newstatus [find string Open $newstate] ;# find the global string $newstatus in the "Open" global list
set transit "from status [$oldstatus get title] to status [$newstatus get title]" ;# informative message
$subcase set subc_casests2gbst_elm $newstatus ;# relate the subcase to its new status string object
transaction { ;# a separate transaction is necessary here
set chgst [find string "Activity Name" "Chg Status"];# another global string, from the "Activity Name" list
set user2 [find user objid [$user get objid]] ;# must re-find these objects because there is ...
set subc2 [find subcase objid [$subcase get objid]] ;# ... no relating between transactions (LLAPI issue)
set actent [find new act_entry] ;# [find new ...] to create a new act_entry object
$actent set act_code 300 \
entry_time $now \
addnl_info $transit \
proxy $env(CLARIFY_USER1) \
entry_name2gbst_elm $chgst \
act_entry2user $user2 \
act_entry2subcase $subc2
commit ;# commit in inner transaction to establish new objid
set aeobjid [$actent get objid] ;# remember objid, because all objects [found] in this ...
} ;# ... transaction are discarded when it ends (LLAPI issue)
set actent [find act_entry objid $aeobjid] ;# re-find the new act_entry using its objid
set stchg [find new status_chg] ;# create and populate a new status_chg object
$stchg set creation_time $now \
notes $transit \
status_chg2act_entry $actent \
subc_stat_chg2subcase $subcase \
c_status_chg2gbst_elm $newstatus \
p_status_chg2gbst_elm $oldstatus \
status_chger2user $user
set timeb [find new time_bomb] ;# and all because time_bomb has objid pointers not relations :(
$timeb set end_time $now \
focus_lowid [$subcase get objid] \
focus_type 24 \
time_period [$actent get objid] \
flags 65538 \
left_repeat 0 \
cmit_creator2employee $user
commit ;# commit in outer transaction to update the database
if {$env(CLARIFYSCRIPT_DEBUG)} { ;# notifier example
$user notify "DEBUG: SubcaseStateTransition $id_number: $transit"
commit
}
} ;# discard outer transaction and object memory
}The [find ...] command locates zero, one or more Clarify objects in the database as a named set, and creates a new Tcl command setname through which to access that set, in classic Tcl style, using subcommands to control the type of query, and trailing field name and value pairs to filter the results (always ANDed).
[find] always creates a new setname command accessing a set of zero, one or more Clarify objects, always all of the same objtype, always distinct with no duplicates, and [find] always returns the name of the new command setname, or fails with an error. A -sort option allows the object set to be pre-sorted in the database before being fetched.
[find ?the? objtype ?field value ...?] finds a set of exactly one object by field lookup, or fails.
[find every objtype ?field value ...?] finds a set of zero, one or more objects by field lookup.
[find new objtype ?field value ...?] creates a new Clarify object, or optionally finds exactly one existing object with matching field values, or creates and sets field values if none found, or fails if many found.
[find index setname index] isolates a set of one object from another set of one or more by index number, or fails if index out of range 0..[setname count]-1.
[find via setname relation ?field value ...?] follows a relation from a set of one object, to a set of zero, one or more objects, optionally also filtered by field values.
[find string listtitle stringtitle] finds a Clarify global string object from a global list object by their titles, as a set of one object.
[find union setname setname1 ?...?], [find minus setname setname1 ?...?] and [find intersect setname setname1 ?...?] perform standard set operations pretty fast (using Tcl hash tables), resulting in a set of zero, one or more objects.
[find empty objtype] returns an empty set, nominally of objtype.
Having [found] a set of Clarify objects, use its setname command to manipulate it:
[setname count] returns the number of objects in setname.
[setname objtype] returns the objtype of the objects in setname, had you forgotten.
[setname foreach var script] iterates through setname, via a set of one object at a time, whose command name is placed in var each time script is evaluated.
[setname get field ?...?] gets a list of field values, from a set of exactly one object.
[setname list field ?...?] gets a list of a list of field values, from a set of zero, one or more objects - there is one outer list element per object or row, one inner list element per field value.
[setname report field ?...?] gets a list of a list of field values, from a set of zero, one or more objects, then returns the results padded into aligned rows and columns.
[setname set field value ?...?] sets fields or relations, in a set of one or more objects.
[setname delete] deletes a set of one or more objects from the database.
[setname in othersetname], [setname has othersetname], [setname is othersetname] do fast set comparisons (using Tcl hash tables) - [setname has ...] also recognises none|one|some|many as meaningful othersetnames representing 0|1|>=1|>1 objects of the appropriate objtype.
Get, list, report and set include syntax to get or set fields in related objects on the fly, and list and report have a -sort option for Tcl-based post-fetch sorting.
[caseorsubcasesetname log string] correctly adds an entry to case or subcase objects' history log.
[usersetname notify string ?...?] uses the Clarify Notifier subsystem to notify users of an event, or can call a Clarify Basic procedure in an online users' GUI.
[sysdate ...] gets the time now in Clarify datestring style, or converts between Clarify datestring and Tcl [clock seconds].
[transaction], [commit ...] and [rollback] are for optional transaction and object memory management, otherwise a default transaction is provided which must be committed to update the database.
For memory management, each setname belongs to the transaction in which it was created, and the command and its object set memory are discarded when that transaction ends or is rolled back. Explicit transactions are seldom but occasionally required, as in the sample above.
ClarifyScript is about 4 years old, currently an untidy but reliable pile of Sun Forte 4.2 vintage C++ classes, linked with Tcl 8.3 and the Clarify High- and Low-Level APIs up to 10.1, running on Solaris up to 8, and definitely not a standard Tcl plug-in package in any way at all.
There is an executable ClarifyScript Shell cssh, and three classes to allow embedded ClarifyScript in C++ programs.
It has so far only been used with Clarify ClearSupport, buts looks ready for the other Clarify applications.
ClarifyScript is database-independent, because it is based on the Clarify APIs, although we have only used it with Oracle (up to 8.1.7.3), and in fact currently build Oratcl into it too - thanks guys, it's good to be able to drop into SQL when the devil drives.
ClarifyScript was written while Tcl 8.0 was still in alpha, so it uses the Ousterhout 7.6 string-based internal model.
There is a manual.
2004-05-27 No more email. Bob died of a heart attack at his home in that most beautiful part of England. A most beautiful man, loving father and husband and a good friend. He will be sorely missed. Goodbye, Bob.
AK May we know who wrote the entry immediately above ?
Yes, sorry. Even now to think about Bob brings tears to my eyes, so this may be short for the time being. I'll update it if necessary. My name is Mel Pullen [L15 ]. I became part of SoftMachinery [L16 ] in about 1980. Once you're part of it, you always are. Bob became a friend; we worked long hours (36 hour sessions) in the shed in his garden creating the terminal handlers for the beebon. The others involved in the eternal golden partlyship at that time were Glyn Philips who did the hardware design for the first auto baud rate sensing modem (yes that was SoftMachinery) and Terry Horridge who implemented the Prestel bulk update protocol on the beebon (previously a program on a GEC mini). I did the hardware and software for Acorn's teletext decoder. With Terry I designed the SoftModem, of which we sold 6. It ran a unix clone inside (OS9). Bob did most of the scary assembler, amused himself with being TG@H, wrote a few games (Farmer Giles and the seagulls). We were the 'uncles' to people like Jez San of Argonaut/JAM infamy.
In later life Bob became a contract programmer for BT, as he says above. He loved to program in TCL.
Just before he died, Bob was working on a Prestel emulation, written in TCL/TK. He'd got the prestel graphics emulator work and was displaying the TG@H pages in a carousel. Anyone want to help put this into a fit state to put on a web site? We have 11Meg of archives. That would be a nice memorial.
2005-08-27 After a year since my fathers death lots of things have changed. 14 months ago I had just finished university and was just about to start organising a trip around the world for nine months when tragically my father died of a heart attack in the early hours of the morning on Wednesday, 26th May, 2004. Needless to say the time that followed was an extremely painful experience. However, 14 months later I find myself as Lead Developer at The Juice [L17 ] in Sheffield, developing rich multimedia applications for Corus [L18 ] (mainly), also overseeing the Corus Construction Centres new web site rollout (September 2005) [L19 ]. I also work as a video editor and compositor for The Juice and independent filmmaker and digital media consultant [L20 ].
Outside of working hours (which are few), I live happily with my girlfriend Siân Davies (Sharn Day•vis) in Manchester, very close to my sister Jo who is currently breaking into television production. To date I have directed two independent films, The Möbius Strip (2004) (Royal Television Society Non-Factual Student Award 2004 Winner) and The Watercloset Diaries (2004) (co-directed with Siân), also co-producing through Polaris Digital Pictures, Butterflies (2004) and Karma Kollectors (2005) with my sisters company Sumo Dance Productions.
All of events and items listed in the last paragraph Bob never really knew about either myself or Jo, but I am sure he would be very proud. To discover the fact that as hard as I have tried, I too have ended up as a developer and inventor (of sorts) would probably make Bob laugh, just at the thought of my teenage years proclaimation that I, Sam Clark, would not be a programmer! How times change. Bob didn't know I won an award for The Möbius Strip even though he did see many rushes of the production, he didn't know that I achieved a 2:1 degree at The University of Teesside [L21 ] studying Ba (Hons) Creative Visualisation. He also never knew that Jo would go on to achieve a First Class Honours studying Ba (Hons) Television and Radio Production at The University of Salford [L22 ]. But once again, I am sure he would be proud and I am sure he knew that both Jo and I would do fine in our studies.
But it is now, over a year later that I am continuing to develop my site ready for a new campaign or freelancing (I hope) at Polaris Digital [L23 ]. As I am coming to the end of development on this project, I have decided to add a new section devoted to Bob and his ideas and inventions. In the few years before his death, his creative side went into overdrive, almost as though he knew his fate and had to get all of his remaining ideas down on paper ahead of what was to come. Unfortunately, most of his ideas eventually were rendered poorly on the back of A4 waste paper, using a black ball-point biro. Some of his musings included connecting Higham (Suffolk) [L24 ] to broadband using wireless networks, a few years before this actually took off. Recently, my mother took up the challenge again and through much effort, forced BT to finally upgrade Higham exchange to allow Broadband into the village from October 2005. Another of Bob's ideas was to create a nodal transport system for transporting containers from ships to distribution centres, releasing the road from endless articulated trucks needless holding up the traffic. This idea was so exciting to Bob that he commissioned me to create some 3D graphics to test the feasibility of the plan - which in the end I taught Bob the basics of 3DS Max r3 just to have a break from his relentless dictation ;) . He did get very excited by these ideas, and I am going to finally put them in a place that will be an honourable memorium for Bob, in the domain he loved so much - the information super highway!
Rest in peace Bob.
Sam Clark (De Freyssinet)