PH future

Tue May 1 16:31:00 CDT 2012

Hi,
Just my 2 bits, in 97/98 I worked at a University that had PH for their Student Admin for 1 campus, sadly it was rolled into their main site student Admin app, a non PH app (oddly the PH app had 2 developers, the main app had 20 but was not much more sophisticated). But I was lucky enough to pick up a Hospital that utilised PH for their Patient Admissions Management 1999-2008. It was fun to work with and we could do anything we could put our mind to, although the hospital made a final decision to move to a commercial package 2008+ due to risk management of only 2 developers maintaining a 300+bed hospital application, no resources to increase the number of developers and the number of change requests not decreasing.

The new application is web based with a  unix backend that runs under IE. It has lots of features which, had more developers been obtained, could have done the same thing under PH. I agree with earlier comments that PH would process before you refresh the queue, but under the Web there is a definite lag.

Alas we program no longer, we roll back to the software vendor to manage changes. I think my grey only start when we swapped to the new system. There have been some regrets of moving, lack of response and costs to make changes to existing software which are now external costs. But these are minor in the scheme of things I guess.

I agree PH is a great app if used under the right hardware config, little documentation required, it would 'flow' and I miss programming in it. I hope it continues to have a life for some time to come. We did have a lot of fun, looking back on it, trying to turn 'can you make it do this' from users into 'wow you actually did that'. :)

D

From: powerh-l-bounces+dstratford=cabrini.com.au at lists.sowder.com [mailto:powerh-l-bounces+dstratford=cabrini.com.au at lists.sowder.com] On Behalf Of Karen Barrett
Sent: Wednesday, 2 May 2012 6:46 AM
To: PowerhouseList Post
Subject: PH future

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
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> 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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> 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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