How well does ODBC work with D3/NT ?

#11

Maybe a couple of my

Quote:

clients will confirm that for us, I dunno.

Regards,
Tony

Tony, your reputation speaks for itself.

Few people make such extraordinary, consistent, altruistic, insightful
contributions to our community (you know who you are).

I always say (not necessarily referring to Tony):
There is one sure way to make no mistakes. That's by doing nothing at all.
Anyone who accomplishes a great deal will eventually step on few toes, be
misunderstood or blunder. It's the ratio of good to bad that's important.

Jeff

#12

Still not caught up from taking my photo seminar dog and pony show
through the Eastern Lakes (In my best W.C. Fields: Buffalo? Ah yes,
I spent three weeks there one night. ;-) so snipping for brevity:

Quote:

Oh my, I Have been pegged as an Microsoft clone. It seems people forget my
rhetoric about "right tools for the task" and "tools are irrelevant".

And I agree but we have different biases when comparing different tools
intended for the same job.

Quote:

I advocate what fits the client, their politics, goals, technology
choices, and internal skillset - not what's good for me. I've made a
career of being able to work with pretty much whatever comes along, so

As have I. Sadly this means that PICK(likes) has become marginal for my
daily income (more below).

Quote:

it's very tough for me to be staunchly on one side of a fence or
another because I can easily switch debating teams and still carry on
the argument. Tom, I think you and I would do much better chatting
over a beer or lunch than in this medium where the "gray" areas get
lost in out of context sound bites.

Indeed and I will buy (Great Lakes Brewing Co. plug here).

Quote:

For the record, this particular end-user that was referred to me was
not my client and I've never worked with them before. Note the word
"prospect". Their original VAR who left them as orphaned used to hold
the app together but maintained that Pick doesn't do ODBC or web or
Excel integration, etc, so after hearing that for years they were
compelled to consider an alternative solution. (That's unfortunately
another real typical scenario that I've been fighting for years.)
Only after they found another prospective solution did they start
looking for someone to assist in a migration, and that's when they
were referred to Nebula R&D.

Understood. And I have lost in that scenario too many times. The few
PICK clients that are left around here understand that interfacing to
'others' is (or more accurately can be) one of the strengths of PICK.
For me these are typically larger installations where the investment
is greater and staff is available.

Quote:

Next, your story about PWCM and nephew Jim is indeed the way a lot of
sites manage their IT requirements. But I've been in this business
long enough to recognize that scenario, and I'm cautious to avoid the
story playing out as you've described.

<ENVY>
Wish I had your salesmanship.
</ENVY>

<SNIPping stipulated comments about Nebula's way of doing business>

Allow me the luxury of slipping into metaphor:
I mentioned earlier that my reliance on PICK has become marginal.

Like the deck hand who has been forced to move on, sometimes I see the
old MV PICK in my rounds. This leads to nostalgic feelings and I wish
nothing but good for her.

(In proofing, for the non-boat folks out there: 'MV' above stands for
'Motor Vessel' not 'Multi Value')

If I notice that she is getting lower in the water, I might shout to
whomever I see on deck (often Tony G.) something like 'Ahoy, she seems
to be taking on water!'.

Sometimes the response is 'I know, we are bailing as fast as we can!'
and 'We are trying to fix the bottom.'

Other times the response is 'Oh, no! We simply modified her to have
less freeboard to make it easier to dock in a cross wind.' When it
is clear that she is just filling with water from leaks.

So, please take what I say here as the above. An attempt to help even
if in a small way.

I would be very happy to lend any 'real' help that would mean anything
but I have difficulty imagining doing that solely to benefit someone
else's commercial endeavour.

OSS is a way that makes sense for me to donate any time that I might
have. For sucess however, OSS relies upon reaching a 'critical mass'
of people willing to work together.

Unfortunately the prejudices and big fish in a little pond attitudes
that I find in this 'community' weigh heavily against OSS ever meaning
anything here.

Moving on with a wistful glance backward,
-Tom

Quote:

Regards,
Tony

"Tom deL" <ted (AT) blackflute (DOT) com> wrote:

I have ribbed you here about your devotion to the Redmond folks.
There is an issue involved about which I have hinted but haven't
taken the time to properly put together. Your anecdote mirrors
many of my experiences and provides a nearly perfect example of
this underlying issue.

While I am top posting, your words are below if anyone wishes to
reference them.

Please consider the conversations that have led to the decision to
consider replacing the PICK application with the Micro$oft Access
non-application:

The owner/division manager/IT manager/whomever (hereafter referred
to as Person Who Controls the Money or 'PWCM') has dealt with you
or someone like you for many years. You have provided solutions that
work, that get the job done and they have no real complaints about
the current MV based application.

PWCM's 19yo nephew Jim joins the company as an intern to fill the
summer between his freshman and sophomore years at state university.
Jim knows nothing about business and his knowledge of computer systems
is limited to that which he gained from friends and the basics from
100 level college courses.

Being interested in computers (he is considered nothing short of a
full fledged hacker by his gaming buddies), Jim takes a look at the
mission critical application upon which the company relies daily.
His reaction is a heartfelt 'Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww, this thing is older
than Grandma!!!'. Given this knowledge, he approaches Uncle PWCM with
a plea to modernize the computer system.

Since PWCM _has_ had occasional difficulty getting information he
needed from the PICK system into his Excel spreadsheet, Jim is most
likely correct ... so let's ask him for suggestions.

'Well if you used a Microsoft DBMS, it would easily interface to all
of the Microsoft applications that Tony G. has sold you over the
years.'

PWCM contacts you asking your advice on this and you tell him that
you can make the PICK system do virtually anything short of flying
the Space Shuttle (which isn't much of an exaggeration).

I will omit any negative reaction that a flippant 'How high is up?'
reply to a cost estimate request might leave but:

When PWCM consults his trusted assistant on this, assistant applies a
bit of critical thinking and suggests:

'Well, you know that Tony has touted Microsoft products for years, so
they must be what we need to accomplish the computing tasks.'

PWCM then asks trusted assistant why you were against using the
Microsoft DBMS (non) solution. The reasonable answer:

'He is tied to that old system, it is the only thing he knows and he
is the only one who knows anything about it. Seems a bit odd that all
of the _other_ Microsoft software is great but the one that competes
with his is substandard???'

It's just like this situation with Joe the OP, the tools are
available, but these sites just need people like us (fellow CDPers)
who are capable of properly wielding the tools.

And exactly why would PWCM want to hire those who are capable of
properly wielding the tools when any high school kid is capable of
wielding the Microsoft Access tools (at least in the eyes of Uncle PWCM)?

'We have to call Tony every time that we have a new client who needs
to get data through e-mail. Since Access comes from the provider of
all of our other software, we can just plug it in.'

Why would PWCM wish to purchase the expensive per-seat licenses
required by PICK solutions?

In other threads you speak of political decisions. Your little drama
is a great example of how these politics play out in the real world.

You observed that one of the arguments against PICK was that it was a
'black box'. Think about that: To the PWCM and his company, they all
are black boxes. Why shouldn't they use the one that was designed to
play easily with all of their other black boxes?

Thanks for the great example!
-Tom

Tony Gravagno wrote:
Yup, no disagreement. It's funny how these rules of thumb keep coming
back. I just got off the phone with a new prospect. She's had the
typical lecture from relational guys about what a featureless black
box Pick is and how much better MS Access is (!!). After assuring her
that her Pick DBMS is as capable as the other stuff, and that we can
exchange her data with anything they have, we discussed options for
integration with Excel, MS Access, web sites, and "the real world".
She then asked me for an estimate to make it all work. My response
was "how high is up?" Without knowing anything about their
application and with no specs for an actual deliverable, how can I
possibly give an estimate? We'll exchange some notes this week to
assess needs and goals and then meet next week to see what they have
to start with.

Just as a further anecdote, it's amazing that the solution being
proposed to replace the MV application in question is referred to as
MS Access - all they discuss is the database, there's been no real
discussion that I could discern about whether the application tied to
Access will adequately replace their existing app which they've been
running for over 20 years. Many of my questions focused around
whether the new proposed solution will really help them to run the
business. This remains to be seen. What I am understanding so far is
that the user will be required to learn MS Access and maybe do her own
SQL queries - even though she's quite comfortable with English/Recall.
So the new "solution" is really just another tool to replace the
existing tools, which actually have been a solution for many years.
It'll be interesting to see where this goes.

It's just like this situation with Joe the OP, the tools are
available, but these sites just need people like us (fellow CDPers)
who are capable of properly wielding the tools.

T

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How well does ODBC work with D3/NT ?

comp.databases.pick comp.databases.pick

Re: How well does ODBC work with D3/NT ? - 07-23-2005 , 06:11 AM

Re: How well does ODBC work with D3/NT ? - 07-27-2005 , 02:05 PM