Is there a future for PowerHouse?

[Brian Stephens]

It's not that bad...  most of your points are valid.. But I wouldn't hold
your breath on IBM doing anything for powerhouse.. they bought Cognos for
their BI tools.. Powerhouse was an established product they could maintain
and open some new doors.

   - only 31 files in a Qdesign screen --> there are tricks to this views,
   subscreens etc.
   - popular databases are unsupported, (mySQL, others?) --> I thought
   mySQL was supported
   - 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 --> never used it until I got the VMS not missing that much
   - PH screens look old. Users must learn specific keyboard commands -- No
   they don't designer etc..
   - Web interface must be done with the PH Web add on which generates code
   that usually requires further modifications to address design
   requirements.   and a very fixed cycle for data entry...
   - poor runtime error notifications  --> have you used assembler.. The
   problem is more the misleading error messages
   - very limited number of PH sites, and declining
   - extremely limited number of Axiant sites
   - many, (most, all?), PH programmers have grey hair * --> grecian formula
   *


You have the benefit of being on up to date O/S version of PH (except where
they have opted to use the older version) and you have support not that
it's been at all useful in the past..


I am on an antiquated cluster of UNIX boxes  (circa 1994)  boxes running
HP-UX 10.20 updated 1998...



On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 9:10 AM, JA Vaughn Smith <javrsmith at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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-- 
Thanks

Brian Stephens
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