My question concerns the use of a shop-management program called,
"JobBOSS," in a Novell NetWare environment. First, the background.
We are currently running NetWare v.6.0, SP4. We are running JobBOSS
for Windows, v.7.4.0. There are two versions of JobBOSS – one is
Access-based, and the other runs on Microsoft SQL Server. We are
running the Access-based version of JobBOSS. We have 25 JobBOSS
users, and our database is approximately 380 MB.

The problem is this - we are experiencing serious performance issues
with this software. We are also experiencing corruption issues with
the JobBOSS databases - but only with the JobBOSS databases. JobBOSS
support thinks the problems are related. In working with JobBOSS
support, they are essentially stating that the problem is the NetWare
environment. According to JobBOSS, Novell currently has a problem
dealing with multiple ADO connections to an Access database on their
server. As a result, JobBOSS customers experience terrible
performance in reporting within the JobBOSS v.7.x versions and above.
They claim that during their in-house testing, they discovered that
reports that take 15 to 20 seconds to run on a Windows server take 2
to 3 minutes on a NetWare server. They say that the quickest proven
option available at this time is to move the JobBOSS databases off the
Novell server to a machine running Windows Server. The other option
is to move to the SQL Server version. They are also stating that with
20+ users and a 380MB database, this actually makes quite a bit of
sense. I have talked to a couple of Novell consultants about the
problem, and they simply stated that they had not heard of this
before.

So, I am interested in hearing from anyone with experience using
JobBOSS for Windows in either a NetWare or a Microsoft environment. I
am especially interested in hearing from anyone with a similar user
base (25 users), and a similar database size (380 MB). First, I am
trying to confirm that what JobBOSS is telling me is accurate - that
the problem is running JobBOSS on a NetWare server. We would like to
know if we can reasonably expect a performance increase simply by
moving the databases to a Windows server. Second, has anyone made the
transition from the Access-based version of JobBOSS to the SQL version
of JobBOSS? How did it go? How much did it cost? And, was it worth
it?

Thanks in advance,

Wayne Mathews
CNA