We are also a person from this world. We are also a person who
travel around in Europe. Mine duty is to advise great companies
in what changes they can make and how migration of applications
is possible.
Important to do this is to get fast and easily information about
infra-structure, client/server configurations, security settings
and all kind of other stuff which are available.
An assumption a clients are PC with a Pentium III 800 MHz does
not work always. The amount of time completion of collecting
information on very slow systems will take can be unacceptable
but is at least undesirable.

For this task we develop a lot of programs which can create a
SHIT (= software historical information tracking) system,
which can monitorring all kind of changes within your network.
The best benefits of Kixtart is reading a great amount of re-
gistry keys. An amount which is enough to get all the infor-
mation you want in a very short time.
Also we are using kixtart for the creation of

• WIP (= workstation independent profiles) technology.
  means: an user gets his applications only when he has right
  for it and all dependencies for files, settings and rights
  are correct. mostly general software must be available at
  the local workstation, but this software is useless with-
  out his specific additional icons and rights.
  
• WIS (= workstation independent software) technology.
  means: the same as WIP technology, but there is not local
  software necessary.
  

The amount of code is big. At this moment about 40.000 lines,
which can be run within 30 sec on a Pentium 200 MHz system.
The data after one month can be 100 MBytes for 1000 clients
and one file delivers the first complete structure.
Other data can be used for more details and for the creation
of a configuration database.

We setup the http://home.wanadoo.nl/scripting site
for publishing some programs,
because the other site http://kixtart.org doesn't
have the capabilities of attachments of programs and sometimes
kixtart code has been deformed.

A mistake must be trace at the beginning and not during the
execution. kixref and kixstrip help by detection
of it. A requirement when scripts are running on a lot of
versions of operating systems and it is the first task,
which are running for an user. Problems with it can reduce
production of them.
Most of the time we see code which haven't always a good
structure.
f.e.

• to must goto statements. everybody tries to read a
  book sequential and not random.
  
• presentation of blockstructures aren't always consistent
  f.e.
  - IF ....
  ....
  ELSE
  ....
  ENDIF
  - IF .... .... ELSE
  ....
  ENDIF
  - IF .... .... ELSE .... ENDIF
  
• statements which aren't executed may contain errors. after
  putting them on a server you get problems you don't expect.
  f.e. it is very easily to create a deadlock situation for
  windows 9x systems.
  
• variable significant only for the first twelve characters.
  

To speed up a program is running them on a old client, which
will show you the time-consumming parts of your code. The
original code was created for mainframe and the first genera-
tion of PC's. A time when graphical systems aren't a general
tool.
For that reason are kixref, kixstrip, compress, and codec
very fast.

A little list of language we are using:

• algol
  
• c
  
• cobol
  
• cybil
  
• delphi
  
• fortran
  
• pascal
  

• bat, btm
  
• ccl
  
• cli
  
• dcl
  
• kixtart
  
• scl
  
• windows scripting
  

A little amount of information you are asking for.
Greetings.

btw: by manipulation of registry you can almost any system.
it is the only part which is language independent.

[This message has been edited by MCA (edited 29 July 2000).]