Is there a future for PowerHouse?

[JA Vaughn Smith]

I have been back on an OpenVMS system using PowerHouse, (PH), for 4 months
now. In that time, I have been re-amazed at the things I can do with
Qdesign, QTP and Quiz. Before this year, I did some work learning PHP and
Python with mySQL, typical Windows development tools. PH has them beat from
a productivity standpoint, and not by just a bit either.

Realistically, what future does PowerHouse have? The products are 30+ years
old but they still perfrom quite well on the right hardware. With the
exception of Unix and Windows, they run on antiquated hardware, though. The
HP 3000 MPE is done; HP offers help to move these sites to Unix or Windows
platforms. OpenVMS sites can move to HP Itanium machines which are about 12
years old and have a very uncertain future. PH used to run on IBM AS/400.
What's up with that these days? Unix and Windows remain viable platforms
for PowerHouse deployment since you can actually buy modern servers from
various manufacturers.

What about the future of PowerHouse itself? IBM has stated that PH will
remain supported as long asit makes business sense. That said, there are no
future updates planned at this time. The longstanding problems remain:

   - only 31 files in a Qdesign screen
   - popular databases are unsupported, (mySQL, others?)
   - PH Windows uses ODBC 2.5 from 1994. Version 3.8 is now current.
   - POW, the automated interface to the PDL dictionary, ships with OpenVMS
   only
   - PH screens look old. Users must learn specific keyboard commands
   - Web interface must be done with the PH Web add on which generates code
   that usually requires further modifications to address design requirements.
   - poor runtime error notifications
   - very limited number of PH sites, and declining
   - extremely limited number of Axiant sites
   - many, (most, all?), PH programmers have grey hair

It is my belief that IBM has a great product with PowerHouse. I also
believe that they barely understand this fact and that the corporation
purchased Cognos for the great business intelligence tools,mainly. The
PowerHouse business has to have seen substantial decline for IBM over the
years. How many more sites can convert to other development environments,
reducing IBM's revenue, before they shut down Cognos?

Sincerely,
Vaughn Smith
Canada
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