Smalltalk Runtime Fixpacks

Software maintenance problems can be essentially reduced with MicroDoc's new Smalltalk Runtime Fixpack technology. Imagine you have a multi megabyte packaged Smalltalk image with your client/server application. You have just deployed the image to some hundred sites over your LAN and WAN enterprise network. Unfortunately, some little bug was not detected during the last test cycle and just minutes after the first users start to operate the system, they run into the problem. You find it immediately, it is just a minor bug in a single method. Do you have to deploy the fixed multi-megabyte image again to all workstations?

No - if you use MicroDoc Smalltalk Runtime Fixpack technology you can load fixes into packaged Smalltalk runtime images. Just create a Runtime Fixpack and send the file (which is just a few KB's) out to the workstations. The next time the image is started, the fixes will automatically be loaded in the image. You let the clients load the file via their network connection, almost like the way Java applets are loaded.

Smalltalk Runtime Fixpacks allow you to:

• Change methods which are already packaged into your runtime image
• Add methods to classes in your packaged runtime image
• Add global variables to your packaged runtime image
• Even add new class to your packaged runtime image

Smalltalk Runtime Fixpacks is available for IBM VisualAge Smalltalk Version 4.0x

Constraints:

• Methods, which directly reference class variables, cannot be replaced.
• Pooldictionaries can cause problems, because they are compile-time dependent.

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