PH future

Karen Barrett kbarrett00 at hotmail.com
Tue May 1 15:46:29 CDT 2012


We use a PH system for 24/7 WIP. Been running great since the 80's and still developing on it. By my calculation, it would cost 2 - 5M to replace. Inexpensive to maintain. With that kind of financial incentive, PH will be around a long time.  As for the programmers getting grey, PH is easy to learn.
Karen

> From: powerh-l-request at lists.sowder.com
> Subject: powerh-l Digest, Vol 83, Issue 2
> To: powerh-l at lists.sowder.com
> Date: Tue, 1 May 2012 12:00:03 -0500
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> Today's Topics:
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>    1. Re:Is there a future for PowerHouse? (Bob Deskin)
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> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 1 May 2012 11:05:22 -0400
> From: Bob Deskin <Bob.Deskin at ca.ibm.com>
> Subject: Re: Is there a future for PowerHouse?
> To: JA Vaughn Smith <javrsmith at gmail.com>
> Cc: powerh-l-bounces+bob.deskin=ca.ibm.com at lists.sowder.com,
> 	powerh-l at lists.sowder.com
> Message-ID:
> 	<OF9BB2767D.BCC800A4-ON852579F1.005205FE-852579F1.0052E4B0 at ca.ibm.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
> 
> 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--
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