Support venues

[georgia miller]

To: PowerHouse Listserv (new)
From: georgia miller on Wed, May 20, 1998 10:03 AM
Subject: RE: Support venues

To: EDISR@detroitedison.com; PowerHouse Listserv (new)
From: georgia miller on Wed, May 20, 1998 10:02 AM
Subject: RE: Support venues

Robert,

I am attending the Cognos User conference in Atlanta next month.  My employer 
has always supported us attending user conference and other education 
opportunities.  After all we are in the education business, so education is a 
high priority.  The last Cognos conference I attended was in Ottawa about 3 
years ago.  When I returned from that conference, my employer asked for a 
report of what I had learned to justify to cost.  I was able to provide 
satisfactory results.

I feel like attending these conferences is important for me, since the world 
of technology moves so fast it is nearly impossible to keep up.  Spending 3 
days dedicated to this helps me catch up.  I don't keep up on my reading  the 
computer magazines we get that would help in this area.  I read through the 
preliminary Conference booklet of what sessions would be offered and decided 
there was enough worth while things being presented for me to go.  It is 
expensive.  I am particularly interested in the sessions on using Powerhouse 
to make our data available on the Web.  Also since I will be working on year 
2000 issues this summer, I will be interesed in that topic also.  

Since we mainly have Macintosh Pc's, we are not able to use to most of Cognos 
BI products like Powerplay and Impromptu.  We have not found the need to move 
to relational databases and have not seriously considered moving to Axiant.  
There has not been much information available on the version of Axiant that 
we could use on the Mac's, Powerhouse Client.  When it first came out, it was 
filled with bugs and was not as good as Axiant.  This may not be true now.  
Moving to IBM pcs from Macintosh is not an option since we have hundreds 
installed.   Because of this reason I seriously considered not attending the 
Conference, but found that there was enough stuff about Powerhouse offered to 
keep me busy.

I attended 2 Cognos classes, Advanced Powerhouse, and Application Development 
Guidelines in Vancouver, BC.  These were excellent products and I learned a 
lot about developing in Powerhouse.  We have used Powerhouse for over 15 
years and purchased it when the company was called Quasar.  We have done all 
of our new development on the HP3000 in Powerhouse since then.  I have not 
found anything that could not be done with Powerhouse.  Quick, especially is 
a very powerful language when using the procedure code.  So far we have no 
plan to do away with or replace Powerhouse.  We are extremely satisfied with 
it.

We purchased a set of Powerhouse training manuals with cassettes from 
Bonifide several years ago.  Several of my co-workers used these to learn how 
to program with Powerhouse.  I do not know how good they were.  I know that 
they are outdated now.

Georgia Miller
Great Falls Public Schools
Great Falls, Montana, U.S.A.
HP3000, MPEix, PH729.C3
____________________________________________________________________

>To: powerh-l@lists.swau.edu
>From: EDISR@detroitedison.com on Mon, May 18, 1998 8:04 AM
>Subject: Support venues
>
>G'day all 
> 
>I'd like to hear people's opinions about various support/learning venues to 
>Cognos tools.  What do you think about the International User Group
>conference in Atlanta and the annual regional conferences around at least 
the USA? 
>Does the former give you a good return on your investment (time, money)?  Do 
you 
>believe to cost is acceptable?   
> 
>I am a contract employee.  Due to my tax status in the USA I cannot claim
>the cost of attending these conferences as a tax deduction.  At the same 
time my 
>management believes Cognos tools to be 'old technology' and therefore a 
waste of time and money to >send me there.  I'd like to hear how others deal 
with this. 
> 
>Do you think that the conferences have become too BI oriented and leave us
>ADT folks out in the cold?  Should there be separate conferences or in fact
>should we come up with a new, more efficient and cost effective information
>exchange medium? 
> 
>I look forward to some lively response. 
> 
> 
>Robert Edis (Blue) 
>Technical Consultant 
>Michigan, USA 
>(VAX/VMS, ORACLE Rdb, PowerHouse 4GL)
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