 | |
#71
 
| |||
| |||
|
Re: Long Discussion Re Relational -
01-10-2006
, 03:05 PM
|
Tony Gravagno wrote: "Simon Verona" wrote: With regard to Tools.. I believe that there are two types of tools... "Development" tools like Visual Studio, Osmosis, Visage and "Developer" tools like jRCS/jDP . The former is best left seperate, but I firmly believe that the latter should be part of the product - whether thats bundled by jBase (taking that as an example I know) or by the disributor I don't know. Sorry, could you expand on that? Particularly the distinction between development and developer tools. Also, to market MV more successfully, we will defo need better (By better I mean visual) database tools bundled with the database - including an account / file designer / dictionary editor and a visual databasic editor (I can't believe a new user would be happy using ED or JED on jBase for example!!!). built in. This is a task that a Distributor such as yourself could take on Tony, without co-operation from jBASE - though it would be nice to see them involved.. FWIW, mv.NET includes all of those things and so does OSMOSiS. This is one of the reasons why I've adopted these products. (I guess I'm not doing a very good job of explaining them yet.) For mv.NET, the Data Manager is embedded into Visual Studio for the developer, but it's also a free stand-alone component for end-users who have some product based on mv.NET. For OSMOSiS, the BASIC editor, file manager, and system admin tools are all built into the IDE. As a jBASE Distributor, I do intend to provide an open source, cross-platform admin utility that does similar things and more, but a single session license for mv.NET will be required, it won't come free with the DBMS. For anyone else, I'll be happy to sell the same cross-platform utility with source and support. What you're saying though is that this should come from the MV vendor. Yes, of course admin tools should come from the vendor, but jExplorer stinks, and so does the D3 File Manager and UniAdmin. The vendors have had their opportunity, this is why I think things like this should be in the domain of the 3rd-party market. Let's stop standing on pompous principle that the MV vendors "should" do things. We know they haven't and they won't so if we want something like system admin tools, we need to provide them ourselves. The problem I see is this attitude: "I refuse to buy third-party tools that should come from my vendor." In the mean time, VARs don't sell apps to new markets because they don't have an app GUI or GUI admin tools. Unless VARs agree to spend money to enhance their applications for resale, we're never going to get anywhere. No matter how much marketing we do, no one will sell product unless there is an offering competitive with others. If we want to compare MV to Relational, just have a look at the "face" of the relational model: MS Access is a very pretty wrapper around the JET database engine. DB2 and Oracle are installed with a number of admin programs. MySQL has a number of admin tools, free and for-fee, thick and thin client. SQL Server Express is a free GUI environment. MV products "should" have these things, but if they don't then MV VARs need to demand such things from another source - and be willing to pay for them. Tony TG@ removethisNebula-RnD.com I like this discussion. Don't mind if I step in do you? The idea of an admin "suite" for D3 built on FC by Tony (with maybe some input from Mark) would be a terrific thing. It would realise a lot of goals - not least of which is that people new to Pick would have something a lot nicer than a "colon prompt" with a blinking cursor to stare at when introduced to Pick for the first time. You could do it Tony - and make a fortune. You could provide the toolkit as a for-fee value-added optional extra with every new sale of D3. There'd be hundreds, if not thousands, of eager customers out there who already use D3 too, just champing at the bit to get hold of something like that. It'd keep you out of all that .Net mischief too. You'd be back where you belong - back where we all need you - in open-platform (not dependent on Microsoft) Pick. If you were also to get together with Jon you could also put together a really nice online help thing. I remember fondly the Assistant from the demo. Just think... I'm sure it'd be a massive winner. Mike. |
#72
| |||
| |||
|
|
What I find amusing, is that it isn't difficult - many of the "tools" in toolbox exist already and just need sticking together... It's even possible to have a single "open" administrator that works on pretty much all multi-value variants! I still can't fathom out why in 2006 there doesn't appear to be a single MV flavour that can be administered completely from a gui... jbase has jExplorer, but it is a cludge (imho) and I'm sure that others have bits and pieces but nothing complete... I just don't get it! Never bothered to do anything about it myself, apart from a windows based file schema creator because, like most of the community, I know how administer the variants of MV that I use from the "blinking cursor" prompt.. Simon |
to provide things - and it seemed perfectly reasonable to expect them
to be the ones to add the bells and whistles to what is, after all,
their own product. Not going to happen. If it's going to be done -
whether it be pessimistic locks for the web, data abstraction layers,
nesting below subvalue, a graphical administrator - whatever - the
opportunities appear to be there for some of *us* to make a quid or
two. If any of us were to provide the tools I'm sure there is enough
cooperation in the community for word to spread - so that if you want
to introduce or present to a new or prospective client to D3, then it
would be common knowledge that so-and-so has a great gui administration
toolkit that only costs such-and-such. I'm not talking complete
development environment here or application software - just value added
extras (open - for *nix & Microsoft). Maybe - just maybe - we could get to the
situation where the extras are loss-leader freebies. Just as we can
download trial/free versions of everything from ZoneAlarm to
ProcessExplorer to SpybotS&D, etc., etc., a clever company could
promote their full product range by spearheading their marketing
campaign with a killer-app for free.
Mike.
Quote:
|
"Mike Preece" <michael (AT) preece (DOT) net> wrote in message news:1136847771.901585.277000 (AT) g14g2000cwa (DOT) googlegroups.com... Tony Gravagno wrote: "Simon Verona" wrote: With regard to Tools.. I believe that there are two types of tools... "Development" tools like Visual Studio, Osmosis, Visage and "Developer" tools like jRCS/jDP . The former is best left seperate, but I firmly believe that the latter should be part of the product - whether thats bundled by jBase (taking that as an example I know) or by the disributor I don't know. Sorry, could you expand on that? Particularly the distinction between development and developer tools. Also, to market MV more successfully, we will defo need better (By better I mean visual) database tools bundled with the database - including an account / file designer / dictionary editor and a visual databasic editor (I can't believe a new user would be happy using ED or JED on jBase for example!!!). built in. This is a task that a Distributor such as yourself could take on Tony, without co-operation from jBASE - though it would be nice to see them involved.. FWIW, mv.NET includes all of those things and so does OSMOSiS. This is one of the reasons why I've adopted these products. (I guess I'm not doing a very good job of explaining them yet.) For mv.NET, the Data Manager is embedded into Visual Studio for the developer, but it's also a free stand-alone component for end-users who have some product based on mv.NET. For OSMOSiS, the BASIC editor, file manager, and system admin tools are all built into the IDE. As a jBASE Distributor, I do intend to provide an open source, cross-platform admin utility that does similar things and more, but a single session license for mv.NET will be required, it won't come free with the DBMS. For anyone else, I'll be happy to sell the same cross-platform utility with source and support. What you're saying though is that this should come from the MV vendor. Yes, of course admin tools should come from the vendor, but jExplorer stinks, and so does the D3 File Manager and UniAdmin. The vendors have had their opportunity, this is why I think things like this should be in the domain of the 3rd-party market. Let's stop standing on pompous principle that the MV vendors "should" do things. We know they haven't and they won't so if we want something like system admin tools, we need to provide them ourselves. The problem I see is this attitude: "I refuse to buy third-party tools that should come from my vendor." In the mean time, VARs don't sell apps to new markets because they don't have an app GUI or GUI admin tools. Unless VARs agree to spend money to enhance their applications for resale, we're never going to get anywhere. No matter how much marketing we do, no one will sell product unless there is an offering competitive with others. If we want to compare MV to Relational, just have a look at the "face" of the relational model: MS Access is a very pretty wrapper around the JET database engine. DB2 and Oracle are installed with a number of admin programs. MySQL has a number of admin tools, free and for-fee, thick and thin client. SQL Server Express is a free GUI environment. MV products "should" have these things, but if they don't then MV VARs need to demand such things from another source - and be willing to pay for them. Tony TG@ removethisNebula-RnD.com I like this discussion. Don't mind if I step in do you? The idea of an admin "suite" for D3 built on FC by Tony (with maybe some input from Mark) would be a terrific thing. It would realise a lot of goals - not least of which is that people new to Pick would have something a lot nicer than a "colon prompt" with a blinking cursor to stare at when introduced to Pick for the first time. You could do it Tony - and make a fortune. You could provide the toolkit as a for-fee value-added optional extra with every new sale of D3. There'd be hundreds, if not thousands, of eager customers out there who already use D3 too, just champing at the bit to get hold of something like that. It'd keep you out of all that .Net mischief too. You'd be back where you belong - back where we all need you - in open-platform (not dependent on Microsoft) Pick. If you were also to get together with Jon you could also put together a really nice online help thing. I remember fondly the Assistant from the demo. Just think... I'm sure it'd be a massive winner. Mike. |
#73
| |||
| |||
|
|
"Tony Gravagno" <g6q3x9lu53001 (AT) sneakemail (DOT) com.invalid> wrote ... "Mike Preece" wrote: Why release PDP for U2 and not FC for U2? [snipped] I'd like to know for real - beyond opinion and speculation - why the UniVerse port of FC was never released. I heard something through the grapevine about differences in socket-handling between D3 and UV, but again, that's just a bit of speculation on my part. I don't think any of us will get a straight story there. I can only guess that RD felt that FlashCONNECT for U2 would only serve to facilitate migration to U2 for the more progressive D3/FC sites. Your guess is as good as mine. There were plans to move FC to U2 but there were specific technical issues. So it was going to be ported to mvBase then mvEnterprise first. It was going to use telnet instead of sockets. It incorporated that Omnis stuff, since that was written using FC. Several of us were suggesting that FC be open sourced. Why not? RD wasn't making any money with it and open sourcing it would get people to enhance the guts and start using it. It's really a great product that just sits and isn't used. [snipped] We were all very excited. *sigh* Unfortunately, as excited as people were at that show, there are few who started to use FlashCONNECT even when it was free, and almost no one who took advantage of the demos I provided. I know of absolutely no one who uses FC as a pipe from VB, Java, Shockwave/Flash. I know no one in this industry using MV with speech synthesis or voice recognition, despite the fact that I showed it 5 years ago and the technology is still hot today. The main reason, IMHO of course, FC wasn't embraced by the MV community was it was really hard to grasp how to implement an FC solution. Noone seemed to know what it would take. It took several of us 12 months to figure out the components, how to use them, how to implement them, what were best practices, etc, etc, etc. In essence, FC was never sold as a solution, just a technology. |
Mike.
Quote:
|
This is not a good idea when most of the heretofore MV development community were coming up with solutions and wanted very badly to upgrade their look and feel. The FC paradigm is fundamentally MV in nature and is really easy to implement. But it is not obvious. It's a lot easier develop with for MV developers than Redback. Open sourcing it would bring people to the MV community. Bill |
#74
| |||
| |||
|
|
I like this discussion. Don't mind if I step in do you? |
Quote:
|
The idea of an admin "suite" for D3 built on FC by Tony (with maybe some input from Mark) would be a terrific thing. It would realise a lot of goals - not least of which is that people new to Pick would have something a lot nicer than a "colon prompt" with a blinking cursor to stare at when introduced to Pick for the first time. You could do it Tony - and make a fortune. You could provide the toolkit as a for-fee value-added optional extra with every new sale of D3. There'd be hundreds, if not thousands, of eager customers out there who already use D3 too, just champing at the bit to get hold of something like that. It'd keep you out of all that .Net mischief too. You'd be back where you belong - back where we all need you - in open-platform (not dependent on Microsoft) Pick. If you were also to get together with Jon you could also put together a really nice online help thing. I remember fondly the Assistant from the demo. Just think... I'm sure it'd be a massive winner. Mike. |
of my worst nightmares:
- FC is for D3 only and D3 people won't pay for it anyway, so a D3
admin tool with FC, let alone a cross-platform tool can't be built
with FC. I see it as a waste of time to do something that's D3-only
anymore.
- Make a fortune? The biggest problem I have in this industry is
fighting the word "free".
- .NET mischief? After over 20 years in the MV industry, .NET is the
only thing keeping a roof over my head.
- Back where people need me? It's been pretty clear to me for many
years, even when I was with RD, that my skills aren't really what
people want or need in this market. I consider myself more of an
entertainer than a vendor these days.
- Online help? Who is going to pay for the time to develop that?
I've been offering documentation to this market for years, and Jon and
I have spent many hours trying to think of some way to pay our bills
while building products and services for this market. The conclusion
is that no one will pay for anything, so we need to change careers.
Now, as for working with Mark and Jon - any time.
And as for that assistant - yeah, that was a lot of fun.
As I said, I plan to use mv.NET to build admin tools which are
cross-platform. It shouldn't matter to anyone here what tools I use,
as long as it works - we sell solutions, not technology, right?
Along the same lines and at the risk of tipping my hand, I've also
been working on sysadmin tools for MV VARs to remotely manage their
clients' apps, databases, and OS. If anyone here has several end-user
sites that need regular maintenance or monitoring, please drop me a
note.
Regards,
T
TG@ removethisNebula-RnD.com
#75
| |||||
| |||||
|
|
"Mike Preece" wrote: I like this discussion. Don't mind if I step in do you? Seems to be like a freeform jazz odyssey... The idea of an admin "suite" for D3 built on FC by Tony (with maybe some input from Mark) would be a terrific thing. It would realise a lot of goals - not least of which is that people new to Pick would have something a lot nicer than a "colon prompt" with a blinking cursor to stare at when introduced to Pick for the first time. You could do it Tony - and make a fortune. You could provide the toolkit as a for-fee value-added optional extra with every new sale of D3. There'd be hundreds, if not thousands, of eager customers out there who already use D3 too, just champing at the bit to get hold of something like that. It'd keep you out of all that .Net mischief too. You'd be back where you belong - back where we all need you - in open-platform (not dependent on Microsoft) Pick. If you were also to get together with Jon you could also put together a really nice online help thing. I remember fondly the Assistant from the demo. Just think... I'm sure it'd be a massive winner. Mike. I don't know if you are kidding or what but you've just described one of my worst nightmares: - FC is for D3 only and D3 people won't pay for it anyway, so a D3 admin tool with FC, let alone a cross-platform tool can't be built with FC. I see it as a waste of time to do something that's D3-only anymore. |
expect it to be cross-platform (as in across different MV platforms),
just that it could run equally well on D3/NT via IIS as it would on
D3/*nix using any other web-server. The same FC code would run on any
D3 configuration - just as many of the dm,bp, programs code for D3
running on different platforms. The fact that people would need FC to
make it work wouldn't be a bad thing at all - imo. Once people got a
feel for what is possible... it'd make your demos pale into
insignificance in comparison with the effect it'd have. You'd be
helping sell D3 to newbies - and promoting use of FC for all. As for
whether people would pay for it - I think if it was a decent product
and newbies preferred it to a blinking cursor and d3ref... well, I
really do think it might sell.
Quote:
|
- Make a fortune? The biggest problem I have in this industry is fighting the word "free". |
ahead at a frantic pace. It's like they often say: "When all's said and
done a lot more is said than done".
Quote:
|
- .NET mischief? After over 20 years in the MV industry, .NET is the only thing keeping a roof over my head. - Back where people need me? It's been pretty clear to me for many years, even when I was with RD, that my skills aren't really what people want or need in this market. I consider myself more of an entertainer than a vendor these days. |
guy. One of the very best. Entertainer? Well yeah - that FC demo *was*
very entertaining, but it would've fallen flat if the guy behind the
smarts wasn't really smart.
Quote:
|
- Online help? Who is going to pay for the time to develop that? |
job with the FC documentation. More in that direction from them would
be great - certainly a lot better than d3ref (with due allowances made
for d3ref's age).
So - no I wasn't joking. We might have our differences from time to
time Tony - but I'm not one to hold a grudge. We're all in this boat
together mate.
Mike.
Quote:
|
I've been offering documentation to this market for years, and Jon and I have spent many hours trying to think of some way to pay our bills while building products and services for this market. The conclusion is that no one will pay for anything, so we need to change careers. Now, as for working with Mark and Jon - any time. And as for that assistant - yeah, that was a lot of fun. As I said, I plan to use mv.NET to build admin tools which are cross-platform. It shouldn't matter to anyone here what tools I use, as long as it works - we sell solutions, not technology, right? Along the same lines and at the risk of tipping my hand, I've also been working on sysadmin tools for MV VARs to remotely manage their clients' apps, databases, and OS. If anyone here has several end-user sites that need regular maintenance or monitoring, please drop me a note. Regards, T TG@ removethisNebula-RnD.com |
 |
« Previous Thread
|
Next Thread »
| Thread Tools | |
| Display Modes | |
Linear Mode
| |
Powered by vBulletin Version 3.5.3
Copyright ©2000 - 2012, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2000 - 2012, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.