Re: SYBASE acquired PowerSoft AND SDP, was Re: PowerBuilder acquires S-designer?

I love this. Keep calling me names, and then claim you are ethical. That's what (see later reference to FUD) Sybase calls SOP (standard operating practice).

In article <3ul2pr$age_at_ixnews2.ix.netcom.com> fcasas_at_ix.netcom.com (Francisco Casas) writes:
>Ok, let's get down to the business of solving customer problems and
>to correcting Dennis' statements (again!). The points are addressed
>in the following order:
>
> * Oracle's ethics
> * Oracle’s resource requirements
> * Oracle's so called open approach
> * Powersoft independence (again!)
> * Miscellaneous topics raised by Dennis
>
>This is my last response to Dennis, as he can not rise above the
>emotional mud slinging that is so typical of Oracle.

This is known as the pot calling the kettle black. "So typical of" Sybase.

>ORACLE'S ETHICS
>Let me say this. You, as a product manager have the responsibility to
>behave ethically and with credibility in the eyes of anyone that may be
>your prospect or customer. As a product manager you carry more weight
>in forming the perception of your employer. The demeanor you've
>displayed and the name calling you resort to, speaks volumes about your
>integrity and business ethics, and those of your employer.

I believe that fighting lies is ethical. You may not like someone to point out your lies, but both the lies and the claims that they are not lies backed up by more lies count in my book as unethical behavior. This speaks volumes about your integrity and business ethics, and those of your employer.

>If you want to see a posting of an ethical person. Look at my response
>to posting on "RE: Need opinions on SQLServer." Someone trying to be
>helpful posted an article on Oracle, Sybase and Microsoft.
>Unfortunately, that article failed to mention features, in all three
>products, that are beneficial to customers. I've pointed out some
>of the ommited features in Sybase, Microsoft and, yes, Oracle. At
>Sybase (and it subsidiaries) our intent is to ensure that customers
>make informed deicision based on facts, not on the name calling you've
>resorted to.

Why don't you just pat yourself on the back some more. I will not accept ethics lessons from a you!

>NO, I DON'T THINK that the other ex-Ingres people turned into a term
>YOU came up with (see Dennis' response). I never brought up any other
>individual in my response other than you (whose level of integrity and
>business ethics can be clearly judged by your response). By the way,
>we've never met, but we do have common friends and I was led to believe
>that you were an ethical, credible, and professional person. It is
>unfortunate that you have proved them wrong.

Perhaps it is not they, but you who are wrong.

>ORACLE'S RESOURCE REQUIREMENTS
>According to Oracle's own documentation the MINIMUM requirements are:
>
>Product RAM Machine
>----------------------- ------ -------
>Oracle Designer/2000: 16MB 486/33 /* Can't remember if its 32MB.
>Oracle Developer/2000: 16MB 486/33 So, I'll put 16MB for
>Oracle Personal Oracle: 8MB 486/33 Oracle Designer/2000 */
> ------
>TOTAL 40MB
> ======

16 MB for Developer/2000 is RECOMMENDED, not minimum. These are realistic figures, not "hello, world" application figures. Designer/2000 I believe is 20 MB, incidentally for minimum, not 16 MB, and we recommend 32 MB. You do NOT need AN ADDITIONAL 16 MB for Developer/2000. And most of our users are developing client/server applications, so they do not use a local Personal Oracle7. So RECOMMENDED memory figures are 32 MB for Designer/2000 (regardless of whether you are using Developer/2000 or not), 16 MB for Developer/2000.

>By contrast the recommended MINIMUM requirements for PowerBuilder,
>S-Designor and Watcom SQL (a Powersoft product) are 8MB of RAM on a
>386/33.

This is quite frankly a crock. RECOMMENDED memory requirements for PowerBuilder are 16 MB RAM, the same as for Developer/2000. Even going by minimum memory, S-Designor, PowerBuilder, and Watcom will not ALL run together in 8 MB RAM. And S-Designor doesn't generate or reverse engineer PowerBuilder applications, doesn't support functional modeling, doesn't support BPR diagramming, etc. It doesn't have a quarter of the functionality of Designer/2000, so it's not surprising it runs in less memory. You repeatedly make apples to oranges comparisons, but I guess you consider that to be ethical Sybase behavior.

>The price difference in hardware requirements is:
>
> 40MB - 8MB = 32MB _at_ $45/MB = $1,440
>
>This doesn't even take into account the additional disk space or the
>more powerful CPU requirements of Oracle.
>
>POWERSOFT INDEPENDENCE
>You've raised the issue of Powersoft independence. Let me say that
>we've structured our sales forces to incent Powersoft to remain
>database independent. The fact that you would like to have customer's
>think otherwise stresses your desperation by creating what the Oracle
>sales force normally calls FUD (Fear/Uncertainty/Dought) in the mind of
>customers in order to sell your products. This is a technique that
>Oracle shows its sales force during sales training.

Excuse me, have you ever attended an Oracle sales force training class??? You are lying once again. We don't teach our sales force to be unethical. In fact, every new Oracle employee is trained on ethics, receives a manual on Oracle's ethical standards, and is offered management training on ethics.

>I'll give you another example of how independent Powersoft is. When
>the merger was complete Powersoft had very early versions of
>Microsoft's Starfigher. Needless to say, Sybase wanted to see it.
>Powersoft was under non-disclosure with Microsoft and would not
>share what they knew about Starfighter. Another, is that Powersoft
>has received a lot of information on OLE-DB. Again, they can not
>share that information with Sybase. What this means is that Powersoft
>will provide OLE-DB support for Microsoft SQL Server 6.0 prior to
>providing OLE-DB support to any Sybase database server.

So what you mean is that Sybase's PowerBuilder division employees refused a Sybase request to violate their non-disclosure agreement with Microsoft, in effect agreeing to comply to a request to break the law. I fail to see your point -- this is not about ethics, it's about legalities. Both companies regularly conform to contracts they sign. That's why Oracle's database group would never reveal the problems they were attempting to help PowerBuilder, when it WAS independent, resolve in its database interface to Oracle7; our ethics at Oracle didn't permit our tools group to even ask our database group. We discovered most of the database interface weaknesses of PowerBuilder right here on the Net from customers posting in their frustration.

>Another point that will ease customer's mind in that Powersoft
>remains database neutral is the fact that prior to the aquisition
>Powersoft's customer base was 40% non-SQL Server accounts.
>Seven months after the aquisition Powersoft's customer base of
>non-SQL Server accounts is now up to 50%. We at Sybase are
>commited to maintaining the independence of Powersoft. This
>trend clearly illustrates that as Powersoft adds support to more
>databases (over 40 now) the SQL Server portion of Powersoft's sales
>becomes a smaller percentage. By the way those figures include
>both Sybase and Microsoft SQL Server.

That's another crock. Sybase repeatedly claims "support" for over 40 databases. However, if you call into PowerBuilder technical support, they don't have a copy of most of these databases and can't reproduce your problem. They tell you it must be a bug in the database, even though dozens of other tools have no such problem. When we at Oracle's tools division say we support a database, it means we have fully regression tested the interface and documented any limitations we found. Sybase's tools division (Powersoft) doesn't regression test against their 40 "supported" databases.

>ORACLE'S SO CALLED OPEN APPROACH
>First let's compare apples to apples. Oracle can not possibly have
>a huge number of referenceable sites (contrary to Dennis' claims)
>using Sybase SQL Server and Microsoft SQL Server, as Developer/2000
>just came out to the market. Do you call support to a handful of
>databases open? By contrast, PowerBuilder has been supporting
>multiple database vendors for several years. PowerBuilder supports
>over 40 different databases.

Developer/2000 was released in March. It is fully upwardly compatible with CDE2 (i.e. Forms 4.5) and CDE (i.e. Forms 4.0). We have many reference sites using Forms 4.0, Forms 4.5, and Developer/2000 with non-Oracle databases including the various versions of SQL Server. And while we regression test and fully support "a handful of databases" (Oracle7, Rdb, System 10, MS SQL Server, MS Access, DB2, DB2/400, DB2/VM, anything that supports APPC, anything that supports DRDA, anything supported by Tuxedo, and many others), we also provide an ODBC adapter which we don't regression test beyond MS SQL Server, MS Access, and Oracle7 (and therefore don't claim to support anything else with it), which we have been shipping since Forms 4.0, which many customers use to access MS SQL Server, MS Access, ascii files, Informix, Ingres, and many other databases.

>Designer/2000 does not support multiple databases, it only supports
>Oracle. So much for Oracle's open approach. S-Designor, by contrast
>generates databases for over 40 databases. Once you use Designer/2000
>you are LOCKED IN TO ORACLE. By contrast, the models in S-Designer
>are available for customers to use on over 40 databases.

We also support ANSI SQL now in Designer/2000, and are working on both reverse engineering and forward generation with other databases. It is a simple matter to edit the generated SQL scripts for use with other databases, however, and we have many customers doing so today.

>I'll give you another example. Let's talk about gateways. Oracle
>claims to be open, yet they require you to purchase their RDBMS in
>order to make use of their gateways. By contrast, MDI's gateways
>(a subsidiary of Sybase) don't require that Sybase's database be
>used. Over 20% of MDI's customers don't even use Sybase SQL Server.
>For example, a few weeks ago a college of mine was involved in a sales
>call with a customer that needed to move data between IMS, ADABAS and
>Oracle. We sold them the gateways to do this. Did the MDI sales rep
>try to sell them Sybase SQL Server? Nope. There is no need! Our
>gateways are open, just like all our other products. Oracle is not
>an open environment!

Typical!!! The Oracle database is PART OF THE GATEWAY! It is there so our gateways can take advantage of our optimizer, join database across multiple databases, do two-phase commit across multiple heterogeneous databases, and serve as an application server. This way we get our great optimizer etc. in our gateways, not just in our database. That's why our gateways outperform yours, or aren't you claiming that MDI is as independent as PowerBuilder anymore?

>MISCCELANEOUS TOPICS
>You asked about Tom Herring. For those of you not familiar with
>influential magazines in the US, there's a magazine titled “Upside”.
>Upside is one of the bibles in the computer industry and regularly
>performs profiles on industry luminaries such as Andy Grove, Bill
>Gates and others. Upside just named Tom Herring the best marketing
>person in the software industry. Sybase was looking for a VP of
>Marketing so we asked Tom Herring to take on that role. Why would we
>ask anyone other than the best to take on that job?

No question that he's the best at outbound marketing, otherwise known as hype. Just about all our marketing people at Oracle are from engineering, consulting, or technical support. Tom Herring is now in charge of all marketing at Sybase, including the PowerBuilder and SDP products. This is not what is known as separate and independent, is it?

Now for my miscellaneous topics:

1- When did "Powersoft" promise Mac, Solaris/SunOS, HP-UX, and AIX ports of PowerBuilder? (Answer: 3 years ago!) When did they deliver? (Answer: Not yet! And not anytime soon.) 2- Does S-Designor generate or reverse engineer PowerBuilder applications? (Answer: No!) Does S-Designor do anything more than simple table modeling? (Answer: No! You'd be MUCH better off with Designer/2000 or LogicWorks' ERWin.)
3- Is PowerBuilder an independent entity? (Answer: Judge for yourself.) Do PowerBuilder executives participate in managing Sybase? (Answer: Yes.) Do Sybase executives participate in managing PowerBuilder? (Answer: Yes.) Can the sales force sell both products? (Answer: Yes.) Is the head of marketing responsible for both companies? (Answer: Yes.) When "Powersoft" employees get stock options, what company are those stock options issued for? (Answer: Sybase.) Why is "Powersoft" so scared of being linked to Sybase? (Answer: Well, they used to claim that no tool from a database company could be open, and now they don't want to be caught in that lie. And they used to claim that Sybase couldn't handle a tools business (look at what happened to SQR, Deft, and the $100,000,000 acquisition several years ago of Gain).)
4- Did Francisco Casas refute any of my opinions? (Answer: Not in my mind.) Did Francisco Casas respond to most of the previous issues raised? (Answer: No.) Does this mean that there is no possible refutation of these opinions? (Answer: Judge for yourself.)

>In <dbmooreDByz5y.Dp5_at_netcom.com> dbmoore_at_netcom.com (Dennis Moore)
>writes:
>>
>>Most of your response is so funny I couldn't stop laughing! Here are
 a few
>>answers for you.
>>
>>In article <3uiafn$7uh_at_ixnews2.ix.netcom.com> you write:
>>>Just your "humble opinion!?" Where do you get this stuff from
 Dennis?
>>
>>Well, I've been in the industry for 10 years, I've got good contacts,
>>I talk to the industry analysts and press, ...
>>
>>>Let me address a few points:
>>>
>>> 1) Powersoft's commitment to support its current installed base
>>> and to remain database neutral.
>>> 2) Some truths that Dennis does not tell you about Oracle's
>>> products.
>>>
>>>SDP is a subsidiary of Powersoft's. Until this week the Sybase sales
 

>>>force did not even have the rights to sell S-Designer, only the
>>>Powersoft and SDP sales forces were able to sell S-Designer. Now, if
>>>SDP was a Sybase subsidiary then why could only the Powersoft sales
>>>force and Powersoft's subsidiaries sell S-Designer?
>>
>>Gee, is your point that not being able to sell it means independence,
 and
>>being able to sell it means dependence? Can Slimebase reps sell it
 now or
>>not (I think you answered that question already!)? Incidentally,
 allowing
>>some reps to sell a product and others not to sell a product is called
>>"sales force segmentation" -- it allows you to create specialist reps
 to
>>focus on a product, without burdening your sales force with too much
>>required training. For example, at Oracle, certain reps sell
 specialized
>>products that the other reps can't sell. The same is true at
 Slimebase.
>>
>>>I want to iterate that Powersoft remains independent of Sybase.
>>>Believe me, as a Sybase product manager, I'd rather they didn't.
>>>However, for reasons (that are much more important than my selfish
>>>reasons) Powersoft nees to be independent! Powersoft must continue
>>>to support its installed base of Oracle, Informix and other database
>>>customers. Additionally by Powersoft remaining database independent
>>>it allows Sybase to penetrate accounts that it would otherwise not
>>>have access to. This means that we will be able to take away Oracle
>>>customers in the comming months and years.
>>
>>So the goal is to lock people into PowerNot, not to provide value.
>>
>>>I would also like to point people to read the August issue of DBMS
>>>magazine. It features Powersoft's chairman Mitchell Kertzman. Yes,
>>>Powersoft still has a chairman and a president since it does remain
>>>independent of Sybase.
>>
>>I see. And is he on Slimebase's management committee? And what is
>>Tom Herring's title these days? Oracle's sales force has a chairman
>>and president (Ray Lane) -- does that mean the sales force is
 independent
>>of the rest of the company?
>>
>>>Dennis, if I were you I wouldn't be too proud of Developer/2000 and
>>>Designer/2000 as they require, get this: a machine with 32MB of RAM
>>>and a 486 (preferably a Pentium according to Oracle's documentation).
 

>>>By contrast PowerBuilder and S-Designer fit nicely in 8MB of RAM on
>>>a 386.
>>
>>Uh, Designer/2000 has a recommended system configuration similar to
>>what you've described, but Developer/2000 does not. And as soon as
>>S-Designor (that's the correct way to spell the product name, I
 believe)
>>can do BPR diagrams, E-R diagrams, Data Flow diagrams, etc., server
>>generation, code generation, application partitioning, model
 management
>>and reverse engineering of code and servers with a secure, scalable
>>repository all in 8 MB of RAM, let me know. And from interviewing
>>many PowerBuilder developers, 8 MB RAM for development just doesn't
>>cut it -- 16 MB on a Pentium is what many claim is a minimum, and a
>>lot of people have been complaining on comp.soft-sys.powerbuilder
>>that 8 MB at runtime is too little for their apps. I guess what
>>you're saying is that Sybase cares more about hyped-up claims (i.e.
>>"you only need 8 MB RAM!") than solid recommendations that customers
>>can live with (i.e. "you really need a major system upgrade").
>>
>>>Further, PowerBuilder has proven itself as a database independent
>>>GUI development tool. In addition, S-Designer has also proven itself
>>>as a database independent CASE tool that generates schemas for
>>>Sybase SQL Server, Oracle7, Informix, Gupta and others (30 databases
>>>in total). By contrast Oracle's Designer/2000 LOCKS CUSTOMERS in to
>>>Oracle FOREVER.
>>
>>Interesting. I think you mean database irrelevant. I agree,
 Designer/2000
>>and Developer/2000 support Oracle better than any other database, and
 they
>>support Oracle far better than any other tool. But we have added
 support
>>for MS SQL Server, Access, Rdb, DB2, Tuxedo, and even System 10 in the
>>current release, in addition to ODBC and others. Our growth rate on
>>Windows in the past year was over 200%, to about $75,000,000, as
 compared
>>to Sybase's growth rate of less than 100%, to about $110,000,000 (both
>>figures for LICENSE SALES, not total revenues). You're still bigger,
 but
>>we're taking share away from you, and we WILL pass
 Sybase/PowerSoft/SDP
>>or whatever you want to call it within a year -- by delivering a
 better
>>product, with more features, more usability, more productivity, more
>>scalability, more portability (when did you announce that Mac and
 Motif
>>and OS/2 port? Oh, three years ago!), more stability, more
 multi-lingual
>>capability, and more upward compatibility. By delivering a better
 value
>>we're making customers happier.
>>
>>>Oracle does not have the best interest of customers in mind. Oracle
>>>still doesn't get it. They fail to realize that most large companies
>>>have databases from multiple database vendors. In a survey that
>>>Sybase performed a few years ago it found that on average Fortune 500
>>>companies have at databases from at least 5 vendors. PowerBuilder
>>>and S-Designer bring you much closer to having your application
 access
>>>your heterogenous database environments from within the application.
>>>S-Designer lets you, the customers, generate schemas for over 30
>>>databases. As mentioned Designer/2000 works with Oracle7 only!
>>>How many Fortune 500 companies use Oracle only? Zero, none, nada!
>>>How many referencable sites does Developer/2000 have running in a
>>>heterogenous environment (against Sybase SQL Server, Microsoft SQL
>>>Server, Informix, Ingres, DB2...)? Zero, none, nada!
>>
>>Interesting claims. You don't know the realities, apparently. We
 have
>>plenty of such reference sites -- all a CUSTOMER has to do is ask her
>>sales rep. We are making our products more open, but let's look at
 the
>>facts. Today, you can FORCE a PowerNot application to talk to
 multiple
>>databases, but PowerBuilder doesn't do anything for you except allow
 the
>>conversation. Developer/2000 can actually adjust for differences in
 the
>>semantics of the underlying database -- without any additional code.
>>Things like switching from immediate (or pessimistic) locking against
 a
>>database with row level locking to deferred (or optimistic) locking
>>aganist a database with block level locking. Things like simulating
>>"hold cursor open across transaction boundaries" for databases that
 don't
>>support that. Can PowerBuilder do any of that? NOT.
>>
>>>Dennis (the product manage for Oracle's tools) paints an inaccurate
>>>picture, yes some people may call it a picture full of lies. Dennis,
 

>>>I would have thought that since leaving Ingres you would have
>>>maintained the same level of integrity. I see, however, that the
 lack
>>>of integrity at Oracle is contagious and it has also infected you.
>>>That is unfortunate, as mutual friends had led me to believe you were
>>>of the highest integrity.
>>>
>>>Francisco
>>
>>Francisco, I don't know you. You may have met me, apparently, five
 years
>>ago when I worked at Ingres. Perhaps Oracle was "the evil empire"
 five
>>years ago (I really don't think so), but a lot can change in five
 years.
>>For example, the people who work at a company make the company. Today
 at
>>Oracle, people like Olivia Dillan, Fred Carter, Tom Bishop, Stewart
 Wilson,
>>Marion Wong, Sylvia Perez, Wilson Drane, Annie Chen, and dozens of
 others
>>who worked with me in development at Ingres now work in development at
>>Oracle. Did we all magically turn into a**holes when we started
 working at
>>Oracle?
>>
>>Oracle did not get to be a 3 billion dollar company by not
 understanding
>>our customers, and working to give them good value and great products.
>>In the past five years, Larry Ellison and Ray Lane have reinvented the
>>company, dedicating it to delivering great customer service, not the
 hype
>>and lies that Sybase and ALL it's divisions generate.
>>
>>>In <dbmooreDBx2s4.79M_at_netcom.com> dbmoore_at_netcom.com (Dennis Moore)
>>>writes:
>>>>
>>>>PowerSoft did not acquire SDP, SA (the makers of S-Designor), Sybase
 did.
>>>>Sybase also acquired PowerSoft previously. They are not independent
 companies,
>>>>they are divisions of Sybase. Sybase had to acquire a CASE tool
 because
>>>>companies are finding that it is impossible to build sophisticated
 client/server
>>>>applications using first generation tools stuck in one life cycle
 stage, like
>>>>PowerBuilder. In addition, since Oracle started taking away
 Sybase's
 market
>>>>in both databases (with Oracle7) and tools (with Developer/2000),
 and
 recently
>>>>also start shipping great CASE tools (with Designer/2000), Sybase
 had
 to buy
>>>>a company to keep up. Of course, like with their first CASE tool
 acquisition
>>>>(Deft, a few years ago, which is not even shipped anymore), they
 overpaid for
>>>>a functionally weak product. The acquisition cost was about
 US$20MM,
 which
>>>>caused Sybase to have a second straight quarter of losses. If you
 use
>>>>LogicWorks' ERWin with PowerBuilder, expect a visit from the
 Sybase/PowerSoft
>>>>rep trying to get you to swap to S-Designor. S-Designor will be
 integrated
>>>>with PowerBuilder within a few years (probably around the same time
 the Mac
>>>>and Unix ports ship ;-), so I bet the other CASE vendors find out
 soon
 just
>>>>how "open" Sybase intends to be with PowerBuilder. Just MHO ...
>>>>
>>>>In article <itkennet.7.002477BF_at_polyu.edu.hk> itkennet_at_polyu.edu.hk
 (Kenneth Yuen) writes:
>>>>>Recently I have looked at the PB WWW page and found that Powersoft
 established
>>>>>a Designer-division. Also, Powersoft holds an official course for
 S-designer
>>>>>for PB. Does anyone know further information?
>>>>>
>>>>>Thanks.
>>>>>
>>>>>Kenneth
>>>>>

 ---------------+------------------------------+---------------------
 


>>>>>| Kenneth Yuen  | itkennet_at_polyu.edu.hk        |

>>>>>| The H.K. PolyU| HungHom, Kln., Hong Kong. |
 Fax:852-2356-7918  

>>>>>| | http://www.polyu.edu.hk |
   

>>>>>

 ---------------+------------------------------+---------------------
 


>>>>

>>>>

>>>>-- 


>>>>-- Dennis Moore, Oracle Corp.

>>>>dbmoore_at_oracle.com	<- Office (preferred for e-mail)

>>>>dbmoore_at_netcom.com	<- Home (preferred for living ;-)

>>>

>>

>>

>>-- 

>>-- Dennis Moore, Oracle Corp.

>>dbmoore_at_oracle.com	<- Office (preferred for e-mail)

>>dbmoore_at_netcom.com	<- Home (preferred for living ;-)

-- 
-- Dennis Moore, Oracle Corp.
dbmoore_at_oracle.com	<- Office (preferred for e-mail)
dbmoore_at_netcom.com	<- Home (preferred for living ;-)