Re: Case 5.1 availability?

In <397knn$am8_at_osiris.wu-wien.ac.at> Rony.Flatscher_at_wu-wien.ac.at writes:

>
>You do realize of course that Oracle is giving away its main-advantage:
>platform independency. This made Oracle big over the course of time.
>
>Citing the use of MFC-classes you put your company to the mercy of Microsoft.
>It is Microsoft which decides for which platforms MFC will be ported and Oracle
>has to follow (unless some third-party would start to fully implement a portable
>version of MFC, which is almost impossible).
>
>It is hard for me to understand a decision which makes a large company like
>Oracle volunteerly dependent on another company, namely Microsoft. The least I
>would expect from a strategically thinking company is to use portable
>C++-libraries, so you could cover more than the Windows world and be as platform
>independent as possible.
>
>---rony
>

Well, I don't work for Oracle anymore, and they didn't consult me on the decision :-)

We, the OCSIG board, many members and customers argued with them very strongly at IOUW, but to no avail. At least we did manage to convince them that having all the documentation in MS-HELP, with no printed manuals even available, was not a good idea. (Their original plan was a 100 page "starter" manual, with everything else in MS-HELP).

More important to most of us was the dead-ending of the other platforms, particularly UNIX. The vast majorit of the installed base that actually uses CASE is on UNIX.

Markets change over time, and I think Oracle's view is that the client development platform of choice is Windows. I think Oracle also views platform independence  becoming less important to their strategy, at least on the client and developer side.

If I were a company starting from scratch, I'd probably take the same approach.

But these are speculations on my part. Note that the CASE group is still its own fiefdom, separated from the U.S. development org both structurally and physically.

Its also interesting that even though Oracle isn't abandoning platform independence for other products, its focus on Windows is contrary to Powersoft's strategy.

OTOH, if I'm so smart, how come I don't have as much $ as Larry and Bill?

-JJ

 Jeffrey Jacobs & Associates
 Oracle CASE Consulting and Training
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 Internet: jmjacobs_at_ix.netcom.com     Received on Wed Nov 02 1994 - 19:32:16 CET