Conversion questions (from Powerhouse to ?????)
Taber, Phil
prta@lubrizol.com
Wed, 21 Jun 2000 10:48:35 -0400
Here is a wild idea available only to you in a university setting. Approach
the department that houses the business computing education at the
university. Suggest they find a faculty member from another university that
is looking for a sabbatical opportunity. Have her/him come in as Leader of
the project and have the upper level business programming majors staff the
project. You should define the toolset they are to use (I suggest making it
an intranet based front end with a relational database back end).
Of course there are risks involved with this approach, but ...
Phil Taber
Phone: (440) 943-1200 x 3892
Email: prta@lubrizol.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Jon Hawks [SMTP:hawksj%yahoo.com@interlockp.lubrizol.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2000 10:18 AM
To: Glenn Waters;
powerh-l%sphere.swau.edu@interlockp.lubrizol.com
Subject: Re: Conversion questions (from Powerhouse to ?????)
For what it's worth. I supported many groups involved
with client/server solutions. What took 1-3 people,
using Powerhouse, sensible detail design and the
formation a normalized database, denormalized to fit
what made sense (advice from the modeling guru's),
(deep breath, now), took each shop 15 people, to write
and support techno-weeny systems, that did not
properly validate data, the users had to be instructed
what data to enter, and the endless debate over vbasic
vs java, both interpretive and limited.
Corba using IDL became a worthless arguement, still
tied up in the OMG, and vendors spawning off their own
versions of metadata interfacing.
Middleware is the solution! was the cry from the
unknowing and hopeful, who soon found they had to hire
expensive consultants and the vendor, in order to
EMBED the calls within some form of C(+ or -), or
Java.
Non-standard screen interfaces appeared depending upon
the programmer.
Interfacing with Oracle became a slow and burdensome
activity. Some groups took advice to use the OCI and
got better results.
Many systems were built with data models forged under
the limits of ERwin, or the flash of System Architect,
both, without the essential chalk-talk, normalized for
SQL, though. View upon view, appeared with most
"architects" opting to stay at the superficial level
of design, and only give the user what they had in
their spreadsheets. But, in a database! Oracle, even.
Oracle is played up, too much. It sucks in many areas,
and the consulting is about as useful as used toilet
paper. O8something, came from Rdb, the DEC product,
when Oracle bought the database portion from Digital,
when the now past CEO was into cutting of his limbs,
to give the appearance of a healthy business profit.
If you hire certain consultants, they will sell you on
the benefits they know.
If you look to Powerhouse-heads, you'll get the limits
of their imagination, but not necessarily what you
need. And, they get to hang around as consultants, as
long as they make nice.
On the other hand, you need help with making a new
system. An common industry designer may fail to
produce what you need, not really knowing set logic
and design. A P-house person thinks in Qk/Qz/Qtp,
often, but will rail otherwise.
I like your dilemma. But, I'm not being paid to solve
it. (grin!).
I hope this provides insight. I've worked in Oxford,
NC for Revlon (Yes, it's true Cindy and crew are the
only attractive people there, and they don't really
work for Revlon). I've been in Charlotte, with a
DirecTv virtual corp. Another useless, but money
making venture, spawned under Cobol. You're up against
a low talent pool.
See ya.
--- Glenn Waters <Glenn_Waters@ncsu.edu> wrote:
> Having read the threads through the list-serv I came
> across a number of conversion questions, the
> majority were answered with (and I paraphrase a bit)
> "don't do it", "it's more trouble then it was
> worth","plan for it taking a lot longer" and many
> other variations on these. Pretty much across the
> board negative! Well we are in the un-enviable
> position of maybe having to convert systems, perhaps
> away from Powerhouse totally. Explanation follows...
>
> We are running 7.33 Powerhouse on a DG Unix platform
> using Interbase. The system that has been built up
> through the years is a heavily customized, very
> specialized system, that runs this place pretty
> well. We received notice from Cognos that Interbase
> support is being dropped at the end of the year
> (because its going open source!?!), so naturally the
> alarm bells have gone off and we are starting to see
> what we might be able to do. Well if it were only
> that simple we might be ok, but there is more. They
> developed and have considerable interfaces built
> using Powerhouse PC! Which for any of you not aware
> is also sort of on the "fringe" of support (and
> still uses 16 bit drivers...). In addition to all of
> this, this is an educational institution and funding
> is always an issue.
>
> So we are exploring alternatives right now. I'll
> list them below, and I'd be very interested in any
> input from you folks on our ideas, and any other
> ideas you may have.
> 1. Set up Oracle on the DG box. This solves the
> Interbase problem, and should involve only a minimal
> amount of pain. Keep running our current
> applications, converted as needed for Oracle.It
> doesn't solve our Powerhouse PC problem, but will
> buy us some time.
> 2. Oracle on a Sun box. Similar to the idea above.
> Again still running our Powerhouse applications.The
> main push for this idea is the university has
> standardized on Sun (we could get them "cheaper"),
> and would solve some non powerhouse related issues.
> 3. Convert our applications to Java. A total
> conversion off Powerhouse. Probably to Oracle DB, on
> a Sun box. Yes I understand how tough it would be
> :-) Advantages of Java (in a University setting) is
> that any workstation we have could (in theory) run
> the programs. Currently only Windows boxes have
> access to the applications because of the Powerhouse
> PC front end. This would solve the DB issue, and the
> Powerhouse PC issue, but the "cost" would be the
> highest.
> 4. Finally some "creative" ideas were brought up,
> like putting a Java "wrapper" around the current
> applications, that sort of thing.
>
> We've started looking at what Cognos has to offer
> and the costs (Axient etc..) are a bit high.
> Powerhouse "web" is currently questionable etc.. And
> we would still have a conversion effort if we went
> to one of their other platforms. Any suggestions you
> might have to offer, ideas, shared pain are welcome.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Glenn Waters
> North Carolina State University
> College of Veterinary Medicine
> 4700 Hillsborough St., Box 8401
> Raleigh, NC 27695-8401
> Phone: (919) 513-6652
> Fax: (919) 513-6452
> Email: Glenn_Waters@ncsu.edu
>
>
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=====
Jon Jared Hawks
Partnership is a privilege. Don't abuse it.
Business Intelligence Applications
Anything you read from Jon (Jared) Hawks is his own
expressed opinion.
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