[GemStone-Smalltalk] A question about #transactionless mode

[Kevin Szabo]

Hello again GemStone folks,

I am supporting a system that has a number of reporting TOPAZ scripts
kicked off by CRON.  Many of these scripts were written a decade or so ago,
and of course, still work perfectly because that is just what GemStone does.

Some of the scripts are using the default transaction Automatic (since I
see their state as #autoBegin).  This was the time before #transactionless
mode.

I am considering moving them to #transactionless since they do read-only
reports on the database.  However, I need someone to help me with the
interpretation of the manual on this.  When I run #transactionless all
appears to work correctly, but according to some documents I should not do
this because I have an unstable view on the database?  Is this correct?
Should I set to transactionless, do a beginTransaction (to get a stable
view), run my report, and then abort the transaction?

Some of the reports generated don't have to be completely accurate.  That
is, if I am measuring the size of a work queue I don't mind if there is
some fuzziness in the length reported.  I just care if the queue is 10,
100, or 10,000.  I don't need the exact length, because it has changed by
the time the report finished anyway.  Also, I would like to run this report
fairly frequently (to update a web display of system health) so I prefer
fast and fuzzy rather than slow and exact.

Thanks for any thoughts on this.

Regards,
Kevin Szabo.

P.S.  I still enjoy amazing up-times and tremendous reliability.
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