Applying the Translator to Odd Formats

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This is about the most off the wall application of the Translator I have heard of.

Dmitri who is a member of our development team and also has a part time role administering our infra-structure. Dmitri is a real linux guru.

We tried a number of off the shelf redundant networking solutions to try and have 3 DSL gates into our office so ensure we have reliable internet access to our location.

These solutions didn’t really work and personally I would have happy enough to pick an adequate solution of a run of the mill router with manual fail over (aka sneaker net in the case of failure). Dmitri how ever figured out how to leverage Linux IP Chains and set up this crazy home grown redundant network routing solution based on Linux. It’s always been a little scary to me to be honest since I wasn’t confident that anyone but Dmitri could maintain this system.

My main peace of mind was it that in the big picture it was best to give Dmitri free rein since he’s highly competent at keeping things ticking over smoothly but that if he left we’d probably just end up settling with a lower level of network reliability and have a cheap router that we would need to reboot manually periodically.

But Dmitri surprised me, in September off his own initiative he completely rewrote his system in a couple of days and implemented it entirely in the Translator. And at this point it’s simple and obvious enough that anyone on the dev team including myself can actually understand the system. It’s visible and easy to understand.

That really is the entire point of the Translator, give a powerful efficient tool to solve problems, but in a manner which makes it easy and transparent for a team to support.

Dmitri is happy because he’s allowed to implement a great technical solution, and I’m happy because I know we’re going to be okay when he is on holiday.

So if you wondering, can the Translator work to integrate my Acme 2000 EMR? Don’t worry, relax, we use it to solve a lot weirder and tougher problems than just doing a bit of mapping.

Eliot Muir,
CEO of iNTERFACEWARE

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