PH future
Charles Finley
cfinley at xformix.com
Tue May 1 19:58:05 CDT 2012
Karen writes:
. . 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. ."
This makes sense, however, it does not ensure anything. I have seen a full
gamut of behaviors that would contradict this. Here are a few examples:
1. One prospect hired their web content developer to "completely
replace" a working application in 6 months because the developers assured
them that the 300 program project could be replaced in that amount of time.
This was done against the advice of the existing developer and, initially,
without consulting her. 4 months into the project the web developer asked
the programmer for a printout of the database structures. They were
TurboIMAGE schema's so they needed the HP 3000 developer to explain them.
The VP running the project who hired the web developers suggested that they
print out all of the data in the database and have volunteers do the data
entry. When the programmer pointed out that there could be lots of errors
she stopped getting invited to the meetings. I last heard that the system
was finally going into testing 2 years late. What did that cost? This was
a non-profit and they did it to save money! Also, as an extra incentive
they would have nice web screens instead of those dull terminal screens.
2. Another example, is a working system that might be replaced for about
$80 million dollars because it does not comply with "best practices". Best
practice for this particular application is to use a package. The existing
application works, and it is relatively inexpensive to maintain.
3. Another was an S&L that was acquired by another larger company in the
late 1990's. The CIO was in his early 30's and wanted to get rid of
anything old. They had the money at the time, so he got his way. BTW, the
company did not survive the downturn.
4. Several other examples involve large ERP implementations such as SAP
due to either corporate mandate or mergers.
There are others. The ERP ones can perhaps be explained away, however, some
of these cannot. Rational reasons and sensibility only matter sometimes.
Perhaps at your company, it might be the usual thing and that's why you
expect it. It is not done that way everywhere.
Charles Finley
(619) 795-0720
From: Karen Barrett [mailto:kbarrett00 at hotmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 01, 2012 1:46 PM
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
> 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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> 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
<http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=3528&uid=swg27014713>
&uid=swg27014713 and our
> supported software environments here:
> http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=3626
<http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=3626&uid=swg27014142>
&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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