Re: Powersoft to drop Oracle support?

In article <3ebs90$kun_at_kapall.strengur.is> snorri_at_kapall.strengur.is (Snorri Bergmann) writes:
>From: snorri_at_kapall.strengur.is (Snorri Bergmann)
>Subject: Re: Powersoft to drop Oracle support?
>Date: 3 Jan 1995 15:59:28 GMT

>Richard Finkelstein wrote:
 

>I[Stuff deleted...]
>> designed for client/server - more for desktop). IBM and Informix customers are
>> going to have a tough go at it. It is possible that Informix may end up
>> purchasing Gupta and SQLWindows because at this point their tool strategy is
>> by far the weakest of the major players.
>>
 

>If you read the newest stuff from Gartner Group, Aberdeen Group, Judith Hurwitz
>consulting etc. you might find out that Informix has in fact the *strongest*
>tool strategy of all players. NewEra is a second generation client/server
>tool and leaves CDE2, PRO-X and gupta and PB about a generation behind. It even
>works with Oracle. It will have Application Partitioning (hey Oracle claims that
>moving a stored procedure from the client to the server is AP which is crap
>of course), and full Object-Orientation. You can even use c++ class libraries
>with NewEra.
 

>My advice is Rich, check it out!
>--
>-Snorri.

Hi Snorri.

I am aware of the Gartner Group's and Hurwitz's recommendation on this matter and I remain perplexed by their recommendation. When I first approached Informix for an evaluation or a "look" at NewEra they declined. Their rationale at the time was that NewEra was too difficult for me to understand. This may be true, but if NewEra is too complex for my group to evaluate then the product's target market must be minute.

More recently, Informix no longer insists that the product is too complex but they still have not come up with a reason that I should not take a look at the product. I am awaiting their reason. At this point in time I am still somewhat in the dark, but I do know that the product is not going anywhere and that the product has some kind of problem that Informix feels that they do not want me to evaluate it. In the past vendors have withheld product from evaluation for several reasons, most often because: 1) the product was very buggy, or 2) the product had a very long learning curve (much more than average) and the vendor thought I could not grasp the nature of the product without a major education effort, 3) the product was architecturally flawed and the vendor did not want me to analyze it.

I have seen many products recommended by other consulting companies which I have found major architectural problems (e.g., lack of data integrity), or stability issues (e.g, random bugs and crashes - PowerBuilder 3.0 and 3.1 are examples), so I usually like to evaluate products myself before I recommend them even if they do carry recommendations from other groups. I would say this, if I was a consultant who just recommended a product and claimed that it was the best on the market, and I then found out that Informix did not want to have it evaluated against other products - I would be very concerned. In fact I would put a call into the vendor and try to find out what gives. No vendor should be concerned about having the "best product" on the market evaluated.

Whatever the reasons Informix wants to keep their product hidden from evaluation, there is certainly no evidence that the product is going anywhere and could very likely end up like Wingz - that is an historical footnote. Informix has been a very weak provider of tools in the past - mostly because they do not have the marketing, sales, or support staff to sell front-end development tools. I see no reason to believe that this will change. Now challenged by Sybase/Powersoft and in the near future Oracle/Project X, I expect Informix to fall futher and further behind in both RDBMS and tools marketshare.

Hope this answers your question. I would be interested in any experiences you or others might have with NewEra.

Regards,

Rich Received on Tue Jan 03 1995 - 13:25:12 CET