PH 8.30 (VMS) planning

[Read, Ged]

Hi Bill,

Do you still have the name of the person at Cognos to whom you gave this
information, maybe someone could persuade/extract (are you listening Bob?)
this and put on the list server.

Ged


-----Original Message-----
From: Bill D Michael [mailto:Bill.Michael@ipaper.com]
Sent: 20 April 2000 17:51
To: Thompson, Carol; powerh-l@lists.swau.edu
Subject: PH 8.30 (VMS) planning




We have already made the conversion from 7.10 to 8.20D; a list of the
problems we encountered (both those documented as possible problems by
Cognos and the "surprises") has been sent to Cognos, along with a utility
we wrote that converts your subfiles from format 7 to format 8. When we
initially started complaining about the surprises and the lack of
documentation and support, one person at Cognos assured us that we would be
part of the planning stages for 8.30, and handed us over to someone in
development. That person thanked us for our input - we've heard nothing
since. Nor, to the best of my knowledge, has all our hard-won experience
been disseminated to others planning or making the same migration. None of
it has appeared on this list, at least, and from the questions being asked,
the customers who have gotten 8.20 have not also been given the updated
"change list".

I realize that Cognos is not able to commit to a ship date for 8.30, but as
Blue says, we've been hearing about it coming "real soon now" forever.
(Actually, IIRC, 8.20 was supposed to have the VMSisms back in it; or so we
were led to believe when a previous employer migrated from 7.10 to 8.00
then 8.10.) At the _very_ least, there should already be an agreed-upon set
of features that WILL be back in 8.30, plus features that MAY make it back,
depending on the time frame and how development and testing go. I think we
should be provided with this list immediately, with updated versions every
so often - this would let us plan for the future, make decisions, etc.,
much better than being kept totally in the dark! Right now, the only
intelligent planning basis a customer can use is that 8.20 will be the only
version of PH available for VMS/Oracle for the foreseeable future, and if
you don't use Oracle, you should not yet consider moving from 7.10. There
is NO confidence that 8.30 will ever exist, since we can't get any "solid"
information about it.

More than just lip-service needs to be given to "involving" customers in
planning. Something more than "thanks for your input". Again, at the _very_
least, patches for the proven bugs we found in 8.20D!

Bill

----------------------------------
Cognos has been 'planning' version 8.3 with the VMS features for a year
now (first cited by Conrad Withall in this list).  It should be well
past the planning stage and into alpha if Cognos is serious about it.  I
am disappointed progress is so slow.

----------------------------------
Hello Ged et al:

ADT Product Management in the process right now of planning a new V8
PowerHouse that will incorporate the most useful and important of the VMS
features that our customers use in V7. I won't give a target date in this
forum, but please rest assured that it is in the planning stages.

best regards
Carol Thompson
ADT Product Management

----------------------------------
Yes I'm very interested in any information you have. We have also been
looking at using Axiant for a GUI front end, but one of the issues is
moving
away from VMS specific commands: mailboxes, logicals, POW (dictionary
maintenance), etc... we use these a lot. Of course if we are moving (?) to
a
UNIX/Oracle (classic) environment this becomes a requirement not an issue.

I also have a copy of PH V8.20D but I was thinking of the V8 release with
'VMS' options so that there are minimum changes. Any news Bob?

----------------------------------
We are currently migrating IB on VMS to ORACLE on NT, with PH still om VMS
PH820 on VMS is already available, but on request only, Contact your sales
rep for this, he's the one who can arrange this for you.
There are a few issues, but this is PH only, not specific to Oracle, let me
know if you are interested.

----------------------------------
Has anyone heard a release date for PowerHouse V8 on VMS? How long has this
been planned? Maybe Cognos also have these doubts.



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