Unconfigured Ad Widget

Collapse

Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Oracle Courts PeopleSoft's iSeries Users

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Oracle Courts PeopleSoft's iSeries Users

    Tony, I think we are miscommunicating. I am not talking about building a simple web interface. I have seen nothing in the Oracle Product Suite that supports the emerging standards defined under web services. Specificlly what Oracle product supports the points I previously raised ? Below is a quote from Oracle CEO, that I think they will regret making. "Web services is a very important new technology, we are fully behind Web services. But the idea that Oracle is going to put a Web services interface on its applications, and [that] Siebel is going to do that, and that that's going to make it easier for you to connect Oracle to SAP, or Siebel to SAP, that's just the most ridiculous thing I've heard in my entire life," Larry Ellison CEO Oracle

  • #2
    Oracle Courts PeopleSoft's iSeries Users

    "In a Fortune magazine article circa 1998 Larry Ellison stated that he would do anything to close a sale including lying to the customer or cheating. To Ellison there is no barrier which he won't cross to make a sale." Chuck aren't all salesmen doing it ( lying )? With cheating does the FED after him ? He can be prosecuted like my favourite MARTHA...

    Comment


    • #3
      Oracle Courts PeopleSoft's iSeries Users

      I have an affinity for big numbers, So let's see..... If it's possible to code an Oracle app in one minute, than...... 8 hrs/Day times 60 min/hr times 5 days/wk times 50 wks per year ..... WOW !! One Hundred and Twenty Thousand Programs per YEAR per DEVELOPER. Our JDE WORLD ERP Package has exactly 10,865 Native programs/commands plus 3,394 Native files equals 14,259 Objects. So a package that took Dozens of Man Years to write in RPG could have been written using Oracle in SIX MAN WEEKS !! In the first place, we've got CASE Tools for the iSeries. Our JDE WORLD CASE Tool can't crank out an RPG prorgam in One Minute (Heck, I can barely write my Name in one minute) but on a good day, we can generate a Report, Inquiry or Simple Maintenance program in 15-30 minutes. And that includes basic validation of data and Field Level Help for the interactive programs. But the bulk of the Business Logic still has to be coded by Hand. Tony mentioned that "You can put triggers at Form, Block, Record, or Field Levels to customized your business logic." So the question is; How long does that one minute program REALLY take ?? Can you add that business logic Faster, Reduce Coding Errors and maintain an acceptable level of Performance ?? I don't use Oracle so I don't know the answer. But I think that we should be comparing the time it takes to Develop the Finished Product and not some intermediate step along the way. CD mentioned the OneWorld development tools. I agree that they're nice tools and fun to work with but I honestly don't think that they can create a program any faster than the WORLD tools. Of course the Results are a nice GUI. The user can do things like manipulate Column Width and Position which we can't do as easily with Green Screen and the Reports go directly to .PDF format. Business Logic still needs to be coded by Hand and IMO it can be Slower using the OnwWorld Tools because of the Point and Click, Drag and Drop nature of the Tool. And it's not all about New Development. As a Developer who helps Maintain a JDE World ERP implementation, about 80% of my work is Maintenance programming. Do the Oracle or OneWorld Tools make that any easier? Mike

      Comment


      • #4
        Oracle Courts PeopleSoft's iSeries Users

        "And it's not all about New Development. As a Developer who helps Maintain a JDE World ERP implementation, about 80% of my work is Maintenance programming. Do the Oracle or OneWorld Tools make that any easier?" Mike, Maintenance is as easy as pie... Remember that Triggers can be in Form, Block, Record or Field levels, so your logic is isolated to these levels, so you don't have to read all the program parts in maintaining/ debugging because of these architectural design. Think of SQL*FORMS as an electronic version of the paper documents your company have right now. And considering that I/O is a given, field validation, editing among others is a DBMS function not an application function your code is very clean. With speed asks people from EMC our famous I5 DASD vendor, they can tell you more on this...

        Comment


        • #5
          Oracle Courts PeopleSoft's iSeries Users

          Tony T asked: "Chuck aren't all salesmen doing it ( lying )? " Well, no. I don't believe Eric Figura of BCD lies. I don't believe Al Delarosa, my Sirius rep lies (I've been buying from Al since 1985). I don't believe my Dell salesman lies. I build relationships with vendors. If I ever found out a salesman lied to me that'd be the end of that salesman or, if the vendor doesn't correct it, the end of the relationship with that vendor. Oracle is in a unique position because they know that once they're in the door it's hard to kick them out. Fortunately, I've never opened the door for them. chuck Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer.

          Comment


          • #6
            Oracle Courts PeopleSoft's iSeries Users

            Do the Oracle or OneWorld Tools make that any easier? Mike Ellison was quoted in the last two years saying that no one should modify an Oracle app. This was in response to customers complaining about how hard it was. This is a big deal, and Oracle's position is that you learn to love what they give you, when they give it to you, if they ever give it to you. I will enjoy watching the crash and burn as IT people, who by the way will make a lot of money doing it, "just click and edit" business logic in database triggers like VB people did behind buttons. The resulting mess will indeed crash and burn. At this point it seems to me there is only one serious non-RPG/COBOL ERP, and that is SAP. And as far as I recall, it was ported to the AS/400 as well by IBM and SAP. As for the RPG ERP's, I look for JDA to pick up some of the pieces of this massacre with their newly acquired positioning with recent consolidations of E3 and other heavy crunching supply chain apps. From what I can see, JDA, PKMS, and MAPICS should satisfy any combination of real work that any company wants to do. Of course, anyone can query. We're talking about the heavy duty lifting here with ERP's. I think Global SSA is a wild card here. With them picking up BPCS, Infinium, Baan, and others at bankrupt prices, with the right sizing/pricing from IBM on an AS/400 that runs RPG green screens like they used to with the S/36 and MAPICS, a 4.4 CD version of BPCS for example with advanced financials and supply chain apps from Infinum and Baan could capture that coveted MSB market that Microsoft is after with Great Plains and Navision. IBM has done everything they can to make this impossible, however. Now, is real GUI productive? You bet, as I wrote and described for an AS/400 native GUI interface in some Midrange IMHO columns in 1999 and 2000. I wrote a Delphi app that messaged to the AS/400 over TCP/IP for a billion dollar (of orders to us) customer that let them drill real time into their orders and statuses. They needed to know where there orders were and they weren't getting it. We went to Chicago and demoed it, and the customer said this app could save our relationship. The non-AS/400 IT webheads at our company were incensed because it wasn't web pages and came from the AS/400, our enterprise platform btw, and refused to allow the app to go out. Their argument was that we couldn't support thick clients out there, even though I had a startup routine that downloaded an updated .exe if there was one. Support was totally transparent to the customer. We lost the customer, needless to say. From what I have seen, Seagull JWalk has done similar things with Java in breaking green screens up into multiple GUI screens, so one wouldn't have to start from scratch with Delphi or VB, but I found Delphi's record level I/O to be comparable to RPG and was a natural supplement in an RPG shop, equivalent now to Java with AS/400 classes such as native I/O. I haven't looked into it, but I think an implementation of Java I/O classes as native calls in MySQL could be the basis of a serious leveraging of decades of logic in open souce software. I did the equivalent by writing my own database in BASIC and assembler in 1984 as the original programmer for Melita, later Melita International. It would be nice if native code in MySQL could implement all of the RPG I/O commands and by extension transparently support Java code calling those AS/400 classes. I think native I/O as performed in RPG and COBOL is eventually going to be understood by business as having been the basis of the decades of success of enterprise software, and SQL triggers as enterprise software will pass just as business logic behind buttons did. The crash and burn of Ellison's manifesto will not be pretty though. rd

            Comment


            • #7
              Oracle Courts PeopleSoft's iSeries Users

              "At this point it seems to me there is only one serious non-RPG/COBOL ERP, and that is SAP. And as far as I recall, it was ported to the AS/400 as well by IBM and SAP." "As for the RPG ERP's, I look for JDA to pick up some of the pieces of this massacre with their newly acquired positioning with recent consolidations of E3 and other heavy crunching supply chain apps." Ralph, As an update JDE One World is not developed using RPG but with a 4GL tool. Asks a Denver insider, and they will tell you that they have been doing this since 1996 the birth of our beloved ILE RPG IV. For JDA, the 2003.7 RPG version has a JAVA twin with the same underlying business logic and rules, but with a different look and feel. Do you think they will maintain these 2 environment forever ? I don't think so. Maintenance is a headache and money is another issue.

              Comment


              • #8
                Oracle Courts PeopleSoft's iSeries Users

                "As an update JDE One World is not developed using RPG but with a 4GL tool. Asks a Denver insider, and they will tell you that they have been doing this since 1996 the birth of our beloved ILE RPG IV." - TonyT That's probably why JDE One World runs so poorly on the 400. It doesn't take advantage of the native I/O but does it all through SQL, and does that poorly since it doesn't seem to understand how the 400 handles indexes. They don't even use EVI's, which is the FIRST thing I'd do to try to get some quick performance gains for almost no effort. Actually, though, the underlying guts of JDE OW on the 400 was NOT developed with a 4GL. Only the PC side was; the presentation layer. The part that resides on the 400 is written mainly in C and RPG. It was written in different languages for the different platforms (Unix, Wintel, etc). The 4GL part is the presentation layer. Which is what most people in these posts have been saying all along that a 4GL can often do well. 4GLs are normally good for reports, master file maintenance, queries, and normal straight forward logic. They normally do NOT do well where complex rules and algorithms apply for business logic. How many process control systems have been written with a 4GL? Remember, I'm not talking about the presentation layer, but the underlying operations. IMO 4GLs are good for quick development of maintenance programs, standard types of screens, reports, etc. The database side and mass processing of records are best handled in a language where the programmer can choose the exact methods to best accomplish the task based on assessment of quantities and makup of the data, and the problems faced. IMHO RPG on the 400 is best for that. MYSELF, I wish we could get away from displaying ANYTHING from the 400. Let it be the premier database server that it is, and let the Wintel platforms display the data, with 4GL tools, and anything that applies to make the presentation layer easier to produce. This is what JDE OW has attempted (poorly) to do. It's a great idea, and if JDE ever finishes developing this product to where it is ready for release, it'll be great. Too bad they released it about a decade too soon. -dan

                Comment


                • #9
                  Oracle Courts PeopleSoft's iSeries Users

                  In addition to Dan's insight on OneWorld, and that is one reason why I don't consider it a serious ERP, the other being that Ellison just bought it, may it RIP, JDA is written in RPG IV. There are a number of products that I have read of that output Java equivalents of RPG code, of course the caveat is that all the powerful stuff is implemented with IBM's AS/400 Java classes. Even if a serious ERP were written in Java and SQL such as Oracle's apps are, the large companies that I have worked for only have a few hours window to do end of day processing. They could care less that Java and SQL is convenient for Oracle and IBM. I've yet to see a serious ERP in Java and SQL though, even though I've been asking for several years now. rd

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Oracle Courts PeopleSoft's iSeries Users

                    Daniel Stephens wrote: MYSELF, I wish we could get away from displaying ANYTHING from the 400. Let it be the premier database server that it is, and let the Wintel platforms display the data, with 4GL tools, and anything that applies to make the presentation layer easier to produce. Part of the problem with this wish is that eliminates some of the best features of the AS/400 architecture. Most client products do not know how to take advantage of a separate I/O processor, and in point of fact simply cannot. Another issue is that the client server model was never much good to begin with. Relying on the vagueities of the client can be dangerous. The web model is far better, but IBM has not really produced a tool that will generate web programs as easily as native programs. Websphere is a comprehensive tool, but it is also a complex tool, and not fully understood even by IBM. The development studio requires a great deal just to get going, and is very difficult to use. A few individuals have been able to use Websphere studio very effectively, and the results are excellent. It is just not intuitive enough for most developers (.NET for all its faults is intuitive and easy to use). Personally I would like to see IBM produce a development platform for the web more attuned with, and attached to the iseries. SDA for the web, you couldn't beat it with a stick. RPG (COBOL too) could be enhanced to create web functionality natively - without arcane CGI calls. The best of both worlds is possible, it's up to IBM to deliver. Dave

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Oracle Courts PeopleSoft's iSeries Users

                      Chuck: I build relationships with vendors. If I ever found out a salesman lied to me that'd be the end of that salesman or, if the vendor doesn't correct it, the end of the relationship with that vendor. Wow. Twice in one month I agree wholeheartedly with Chuck! I'm gonna have to get checked out... Seriously, though, I am a vendor and I never lie to a prospect, and in fact will steer them to competitive products if it makes sense. I'd rather have a few happy customers than a bunch of unhappy victims. Joe

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Oracle Courts PeopleSoft's iSeries Users

                        Don't you know that 6 out of 10 web sites are using ORACLE DBMS and/or tools. Uh, where does THIS information come from? As far as I know there are a whole bunch of web sites using SQL Server, as well as a slew of them using things like MySQL. Even among the big sites, Oracle is not as prevalent as your claim. I think Amazon uses Oracle, but Google doesn't, nor does Travelocity. None of the online trading firms use Oracle that I can tell, nor do many banks, or airlines. Ameritrade, even though it uses Oracle for its back-end processing, uses a different database for its web applications. Joe, programmers code these non-WEB applications using 4GL tools like SQL*FORMS. It's a 30 to 1 ratio of productivity. To code WHAT, exactly? Maintenance programs? That's nice. Now, how much productivity do you get doing senior-level programming tasks such as MRP and pricing? And by the way, with a decent skeleton I can knock out a "work-with" style maintenance program in a day. Are you saying an SQLFORMS programmer can write 30 maintenance programs a day? That's one every fifteen minutes. I'd really like to see that. Remember that Triggers can be in Form, Block, Record or Field levels, so your logic is isolated to these levels, so you don't have to read all the program parts in maintaining/ debugging because of these architectural design. And this is probably the crux of the biscuit. While a certain part of business logic has to do with the presentation, the hard stuff is has to do with validating transactions. Transaction validation requires interactions between multiple database elements, whether it be customer types or item classes or discounts or GL accounts. There has yet to be a tool designed for this level of the program. So typically, a salesman walks in with a tool that generates a file maintenance program with a few edits, then generates a web version, and tada, we're done! But the hard part is to then write the REAL business logic - the stuff that determines which orders go to which production lines, which customers get which discounts, which inventory gets shipped where, which pallets get loaded on which truck. None of this is helped by a 4GL, and in many cases it is hindered, because the typical 4GL actually reduces the number of programming options available. Anyway, as many people have said over and over here, until you can write the real guts of a system with a given tool, then the tool is not adequate for enterprise level development. Joe

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Oracle Courts PeopleSoft's iSeries Users

                          Yes, Joe, you're right. I believe 6 out of 10 websites use MySQL because its PHP's default database. My own site is that way. I have a little bit of SQL to populate my home page when it comes up with latest data from my forum database. That falls somewhere between warm and fuzzy and cheap thrills. A bunch of sites would be based on SQL Server. I doubt Oracle has even 1 out of 10 sites. It's scary that anyone could even think that. Isolated logic? You don't have to read all the parts of the program to make changes? What kind of changes? What useful function ever was done in isolation against one file? Has anyone ever seen an ERP program that did anything useful looking at one file? And as for not needing to know about the rest of the program, that reminds me of BPCS maintenance programmers who were not quite up to snuff who were told there was a problem if such and happened, so they would go into a program and write code equivalent to IF such and such happens, make this problem go away rather than figuring out where in the program the problem logic is. And the "shell" maintenance programs that keeps getting mentioned? I imagine most products do that. I did in 1984 with my database. It's about as trivial as you get. And because of that, I have never seen such a program used in production in my 13 years on the AS/400 (would have been 14 had I worked this year). Never. Not even close. If it was that close we just used DFU/DBU/EZ/Extermin8/etc. I have no idea why it even keeps getting mentioned except that maybe they think that's a program worth mentioning or something. I don't know. rd

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Oracle Courts PeopleSoft's iSeries Users

                            And there seems to be lots of them being thrown around in this discussion. Does everyone here realize that 96.45% of all statistics are made up on the spot ?? Trust me on this one. Happy New Year, Mike

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Oracle Courts PeopleSoft's iSeries Users

                              Tony, "Easy as Pie" ?? You're starting to sound like a Salesman. ;-) When I make an intentional understatement, I use the term "It's a Piece-a-Cake". That let's my co-workers know that it won't be as easy as it looks. But what you're describing sounds (to me) to be very similar to the Event Driven architecture that's used in VB, JDE OneWorld Event Rules and the list goes on. And in my experience, I've found the Event Driven architecture to be at best useless and at worst an hinderance when trying to code Business Logic. In these types of Functions, I need to control the flow of the code. So chances are, I'm going to put that code in it's own module. I don't want it scattered around at the Form, Field or Record levels. And I certainly don't want it jumping randomly from One Event to Another, simply because Joe User moved the Mouse. So how does the Oracle 4GL help me in that situation? Mike

                              Comment

                              Working...
                              X