Cognos coversion from mainframe to P

[Ohmes, Matt]

Touch a nerve there Jon? ;-)

-----Original Message-----
From: Jon Hawks [mailto:hawksj@yahoo.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 14, 1999 2:56 PM
To: pickerij@norbord.com; whl3@nwths.com; POWERH-L@lists.swau.edu
Subject: RE: Cognos coversion from mainframe to P


I have to embrace any common sense that appears in the
industry, wherever that may happen.

Just my crusty, old view: 
The PC revolution has changed the workhorse Midi's
production positive view, to now look like they are
old and not-trendy.  Common sense has taken a vacation
on data processing and new terms cause perceptions
that influence us, as well as users, to believe
something far greater and more intelligent is
happening in the industry.  IBM had this mystique,
long ago, when they had 70% of the market.  The 2-3%
budget that ran companies for a while have doubled and
tripled in costs, many unnecessarily.  Growth could
have happened differently.  

Once, in the latter 80's and early 90's, we were on
our way, as an industry, to rid ourselves of dba's. 
We had all the tools we needed to do it ourselves. 
Oracle has de-revolutionized the intelligent databases
that were dba-free.  Once, we were headed to
enormously, productive distributed processing
enviroments.  Only to fall victim to analysts and
designers, who just couldn't make good on their
promises.  Meanwhile, when Microsoft was still at $14
a share (1991), a small change was sweeping the
country.  PC literate, spreadsheet mongering, foxbase
intelligent, crystal report folks were convincing a
lot of departments they could carry the load.  Hmmm. 
I think we should find those folks and let them. 
Meanwhile, a revolution started to occur with
networks.  They actually got fast.  Now, we have
something,right?  Now, with all these pc's tied
together, and don't forget the mainframe, we have a
network!  My goodness, a network.  Now, we really look
smart.  I mean really, really smart!  Soon, we had
everything from middleware to upperware, and soon I'll
release my version of underware, and added the costs
of system administrator's for nt, then one for ux,
then one for networking, no, we need two, and a
database guru or at least some guy or gal that is only
half anal-retentive, and a couple of gui programmers
and a document management guy and some guy to manage
some of these guys and then we also need some person
to handle more methodologies from prototype, to
waterfall, to old structured, to object-oriented anal
and prog,and also let's toss in some ER/win guys with
composer's and excellerators, and couple of BPR folks
and let's not forget some components folks to do
enterprise development software, and let's change from
open systems to tightly integrated systems based on
ab-bab SAP so that not even the inventor of the
database can understand what's going on, and let's add
something call DSS, no BI, no EI, I'm sorry but I
think these are now all wired for OLAP, based on
ROLAP, but everyone knows them as Nancy. Rocky
Raccoon, stepped into the saloon, only to find his
rival.....brrrt, sorry, I forget where I was in this
confusion.  By Golly, we're so smart, aren't we. 
Let's quadrulple our costs, become politically bound
up in battle, and accomplish little to nothing over
the next few years and repeat the ninety's.  And while
we are still breathing let's bash each other in the
ego and show each other how smart we are.  Oh, yeah,
and ask for more budget and resources, because, we
know so much about business and how to run it and
process data that we need to increase our staffs and
get more machines, just because we're so smart.



--- pickerij@norbord.com wrote:
> 
> >My name is Walter Lucas, and I'm a mainframe Cognos
> programmer
> >working on a HP-3000 900 series using MPE.  My
> office mate and I
> >have been at this for 15 years now, but times are
> a-changin'.
> >
> >What we are currently looking at is migrating our
> homegrown applications   
> 
> >from the HP onto the NT platform.
> <database indecision stuff snipped>
> >Any help is greatly appreciated, even a pointer in
> the right direction.
> >Also, I'll gladly offer more information as
> required.
> 
> You asked for a pointer in the right direction!
> 
> Why would you move away from one of the lowest cost
> per transaction, most   
> reliable, easiest to use and yet most open (i.e.
> Posix compliant)   
> hardware platforms in the industry with probably the
> most robust,   
> reliable, flexible database (and it's free with the
> os) of all time in   
> order to saddle yourself with MS and Oracle?
> 
> But then maybe you're just looking for a time and
> money consuming   
> adventure at which to throw lots of time and money
> :-)
> 
> Five years ago folks thought your proposed migration
> was the cool way to   
> go. Time and money, not to mention the astounding
> lack of success of many   
> projects, has made those who waited look like the
> smart ones.
> 
> Regards,
> John "my bias is showing" Pickering
> Toronto
> 
> 
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