[Openroad-users] Comments please

[Paul White]

Hi Frank,
sorry I dont have more time just now to give a decent reply...




> 3. XXXXXXX (a company working with Ingres) has developed tools for code
> analysis and migration to OpenRoad Applications Server which


There are also companies out there offering manual conversion services to
OpenROAD Appserver. I believe the costs are be comparable. Feel free to shop
around...


> It is a "thick client", requiring software delivery to PC's,


OpenROAD can be deployed as thick or as thin as you wish. from:all business
logic is managed by the appserver, to: eclient is used deploy fat client,
to: standalone machine with local DB.


> it is vendor specific and not standards based,


Oh dear. Please send your client to ingres.com to see the presentations at
http://www.ingres.com/customers/vip-archive.php
Some good ones are
"Hello World! Taking Ingres Data to the Web"
"Hello OpenROAD! An Introduction to Rapid Application Development for
Ingres"
 "putting the open into openroad"


also the developer skills base is in decline.


Dont you just love blantant inaccuracies? I personally have trained 2 new
developers in OpenROAD in the last 12 months and have been involved with 2
new installations. PeerlessIT opened a shop overseas in the last few years
and has hired/trained over 10 new developers (I've lost count) Myworkplace
(business partner) has trained 3 new developers in the last 3 months. In the
last 2 months there have been 16 new subscriptions (however 13 unsubs
because I was doing a bit of cleanup). Generally I have seen increased
activity in OpenROAD in the last 12 months.


> using the Ingres product would also involve third party consultancy and
> additional licensing costs,
>

We use OpenROAD to talk directly to all sorts of technologies, it costs only
development time. Here are some integration projects I've had to deal with
for just one client for example:
XML data feeds, HTTP post to internal and external services, link to .net
assembly, call modules written in c# to deal with proprietary protocols,
calls to VB6 and VB.net modules,  standard calls to windows DLLs, write and
deploy our own creditcard encryption DLL. Also external calls to most
microsoft apps, embed activeX components in the application, updates to
Oracle, MSsql, MSaccess, Ingres, and even a lantastic based database in
a single logical transaction .  Peerless integration applications are used
in banking/finance, internet gambling, data streams from serial port,
monitoring PLCs in manufacturing, laptops installed in trucks printing
invoices for clients and monitoring fuel usage.
None of these integrations functions carried licencing overhead.


> 6. A detailed analysis of the XXX client code is a pre requisite for re
> writing the application,
>

You'll be doing this in anycase. Dont be under the mistaken belief that
moving to appserver is simple cut and paste. There is a fundamental paradigm
shift. Some business processes are not suited to thin client technology.
Long running transactions and batch processing need special attention. The
same questions will arise no matter what the language.

 4. The use of the XXX OpenRoad client will be run down over time, with its
> business logic processing being moved to the
>

One of the benefits of Appserver is you can migrate screens, functions or
whole modules at a time without putting existing application functions at
risk.


 6. Greater responsiveness to business change requirements – a business area
> can be updated without a complete application upgrade. More functional
> releases possible in shorter timeframes, and reduced development and
> operating costs.
>

My experience with VB.net development has been more expensive than OpenROAD.
I have 2 openroad developers keeping up with a team of 5/6 web developers.
To release a web service based on VB.net requires taking down all business
functions on the website. (in the case of load balanced servers we take them
down one by one then turn on a soft switch) With OpenROAD fat client we just
put a new image onto the shared file server. Existing sessions are not
affected.


Our current application has lines of code, rewriting in Weblogic/Java/.net
> is expected to take 36 months.


How many lines? Is that 36 man months?


-- 
Paul White
Shift Seven Solutions
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.peerlessit.com/pipermail/openroad-users/attachments/20071031/c02fa6c5/attachment.html