Cognos User Day report

[Pickering, John (NORBORD)]

I attended most of yesterday's "User Day" here in Toronto. A good show if
you're into Cognos' BI tools but pretty slim fare for us olde tyme
PowerHouse customers.

A big disappointment was the president's failure to even mention PowerHouse
in the opening session. Ron was entertaining as usual, although perhaps a
bit more subdued than at past events (no motorcycle, no Braveheart), but
perhaps that is just a reflection of the times. He and various other
corporate staff presented a broad spectrum of Cognos BI stuff -- but nobody
even mentioned PowerHouse -- especially unfortunate considering the
disproportionate contribution to the bottom line made by ADT :-(

The ADT side of the house had a table in the lobby just like all the other
products -- at least they were allowed to attend. Chuck Reinke and JP Fortin
demoed PH Web to any who wanted a look. They included live access to real
customers' sites, as if to prove there were actually some real customers!
These two veterans did a 45 minute presentation to a full room of about 100
attendees. The guys were doing just fine until about minute 35 when someone
asked politely "What's Quick?" -- kind of stopped Chuck in mid-sentence! In
a room of about 100 only about 6 hands were raised when asked "How many use
PowerHouse?". A sad sign of the times I guess :-(

But the latest release of PH Web does seem a big improvement. Many of the
things which could only be accomplished with JavaScript in earlier versions
are now possible with enhanced Qdesign syntax. To me, this definitely seems
the correct way to go. I'd be happiest if I could do everything in Qdesign
and never touch the generated HTML template (now XHTML) -- one source code
source file which could then never get out of sync with its template. Keep
up the good work Bob!

Regards,
JWP