On 07/10/2012 04:57 AM, Andreas Tille wrote:
Hi Bhaskar, thanks for your comments. On Mon, Jul 09, 2012 at 06:29:32PM -0400, Bhaskar, K.S wrote:For what it's worth, the name "VistA" is owned by the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). As the Microsoft OS is called "Windows Vista", there is no conflict of names or trademarks.It just makes a good joke "Debian Vista" :-)A VistA distribution (== Debian package size) will be around 160-200MB, depending on the VistA distribution (and whether it has sample patient data - distributions populated with sample patient data tend to be larger). If you want to break up VistA into multiple packages, you will need to create a meta package that depends on the individual packages, but all of it VistA will need to be present for it to work correctly.Assumed there would be a reasonable way to split up VistA into reasonable pieces / packages it is perfectly clear that there need to be an easy way to fetch them all via a metapckage. The question for me as a total outsider is: Do you see chances for a reasonable split and what might be reasonable criterions for splitting. From my perspective the split could be done into separately upgradable pieces (if these exists - setting versioned dependencies is a strength of Debian - so this could be a reasonable approach) or there also might be a criterion for splitting into separate working fields in a hospital - if those modularisation is attemped in the KIDS Luis has mentioned.
[KSB] There is not a reasonable way to split VistA. VistA is a self-aware system, i.e., you can query a VistA system about itself. So, to remove a package you have to remove knowledge about the package from the database and knowledge about a package is integrated with knowledge about other packages on the system.
One can of course split it up alphabetically based on routine names to make the individual packages smaller to download (e.g., for those with unreliable Internet access), but all of them need to be there for VistA to run correctly.
Years ago, there was a procedure to extract from VistA the database management system (mostly) free of the application packages. This was used to build a number of interesting applications, including a jewelery wholesaler ERP system, an aircraft maintenance ERP system, a system to track objects in the airspace of a South Asian country, etc. But the extraction was a manual process. There was an attempt to create a tool called "Stonecutter" to automate the procedure, but the last I heard (several years ago), it had not yet produced a working proof-of-concept.
Regards -- Bhaskar
Kind regards
Andreas.
-- GT.M - Rock solid. Lightning fast. Secure. No compromises. _____________ The information contained in this message is proprietary and/or confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, please: (i) delete the message and all copies; (ii) do not disclose, distribute or use the message in any manner; and (iii) notify the sender immediately. In addition, please be aware that any message addressed to our domain is subject to archiving and review by persons other than the intended recipient. Thank you.