Is there a future for PowerHouse?

[Bob Deskin]

Vaughn told about his plan to post this. I explained that I can only reply 
with public information and clarification. I cannot express my opinions 
nor can I offer any conjecture. As you probably know, I've been working 
with PowerHouse since 1980 and I have very little gray hair. I have no 
idea if the two are related.

Regarding the AS/400 version, Cognos matured PowerHouse on AS/400 in 1994. 
It has been on Vintage Support ever since. While Vintage Support does not 
provide for any development support, it does allow customers with a legal 
support requirement to continue to use PowerHouse. PowerHouse on MPE/iX is 
also on Vintage Support. A full list of the supported versions can be 
found here: 
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=3528&uid=swg27014713 and our 
supported software environments here: 
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=3626&uid=swg27014142

Bob

Bob Deskin
Senior Product Manager
IBM Cognos Application Development Tools
IBM Canada
+1 613-356-5633
bob.deskin at ca.ibm.com
http://www.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/products/powerhouse/



From:   JA Vaughn Smith <javrsmith at gmail.com>
To:     powerh-l at lists.sowder.com
Date:   2012-05-01 10:12 AM
Subject:        Is there a future for PowerHouse?
Sent by:        powerh-l-bounces+bob.deskin=ca.ibm.com at lists.sowder.com



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--
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Mailing list: powerh-l at lists.sowder.com
Subscribe: 'subscribe' in message body to 
powerh-l-request at lists.sowder.com
Unsubscribe: 'unsubscribe &lt;password&gt;' in message body to 
powerh-l-request at lists.sowder.com
http://lists.sowder.com/mailman/listinfo/powerh-l
This list is closed, thus to post to the list you must be a subscriber.
Add 'site:lists.sowder.com powerh-l' to your search terms to search the 
list archive at Google.