JDE World To JDE OneWorld

[Guest.Visitor]

Robbie, We went through this about four years ago with a client of ours. They wanted to implement OneWorld and run both World and OneWorld environments. Scared the living *censored* out of us Green Screeners as well as their full timers. There was much talk about the Community Colleges, B.Daltons Books and several other options. We hired a temp to come in and teach us the fundementals of C++ like: Dynamic Linking, re-useable code and such neat things. Our client did not do much except complain and moan about the change. Basically, they did not want to learn anything new and the C++ folks they could retain had no knowledge of how systems really worked. It was a fiasco from the outset. To this day, they are on World. Their bean counters are happy, their programmers are happy and JDE is happy because they still get maintenance and upgrade fees yearly. As far as education, I think the company owes it to itself to pay you while you are going to the Community College (During the DAY!!) AND pay your tuition if your grades are at least a 'C' or better. Remember, this is a business decision and with all business decisions, there are ancillary costs involved. These costs should be made to include the overhead of education as well. Both JDE and Community College. Also, as an employer I would have you sign a notarized form that requires you to remain an employee with the company for a minimum of one year after completion of classes, as long as you are not being forced to work a 70 hour week all this time. -bret P.S. I'd even request mileage to and from the Community College.

[nycsusan@hotmail.com]

JDE World To JDE OneWorld

Also, as an employer I would have you sign a notarized form that requires you to remain an employee with the company for a minimum of one year after completion of classes Bret, This is illegal, and therefore unenforceable. You can have employees sign a "notarized form" if you want, but it will not hold up in court. It may, however, be a good bluff to scare off people who plan on quitting immediately after getting free training.

[Guest.Visitor]

JDE World To JDE OneWorld

Wow! I had no idea. I have a few of these under my belt along with some "no-competes". Why can't a company require you to either stay for a length of time or have you pay back the edumacation? I think this would be enforceable if two parties readily agreed on it. Maybe my mindset is different than many on this subject, but I've always felt that a persons word should be binding. But then again, if it were we would not need paper to enforce the agreements or lawyers to break them. -bret

[nycsusan@hotmail.com]

JDE World To JDE OneWorld

Why can't a company require you to either stay for a length of time or have you pay back the edumacation? I think this would be enforceable if two parties readily agreed on it. It's considered to be tantamount to indentured servitude. Is it fair to the employer if someone gets trained and then quits? Probably not. But you and I both know of employers who are not fair either. It works both ways. Use it a a bluff to weed out the insincere people, but just know that you probably cannot enforce it if the employee bails after being trained.

[David Abramowitz]

JDE World To JDE OneWorld

My thoughts are a question: What does the business expect to gain from this move. What will be accomplished, that was not accomplished before. Dave

[Guest.Visitor]

JDE World To JDE OneWorld

David, Good question! One we asked many times and the best response was: "Now your JDE environment will be in a GUI Windoze based format." Not a good response but the best one we ever got. The quality of the programs did not improve. IMHO, they reduced the effectiveness of the systems in the first releases. A group of monkeys it is theorized can write the Encyclopedia Britannica given enough time, but one programmer cannot coherently copy an application from one format to another. (Tongue in cheek) The help desk at JDE did not improve. Instead another layer of application support was implemented. Half of the time, they wanted to blame the issues on NT, Windoze, your brand of PC, etc. Sometimes it was that, most were bugs. Actually (IMHO), this served to alienate and downsize some darn good talent. Me? At the time I was managing JDE accounts for a third party (third-third?) consulting firm and we snatched up what we could and kept them busy almost 24/7/365. All because a good salesperson sold the CEO and CFO on the wonderful world of consistency. -bret P.S. Any venom you may have seen here is coincidental. I still like the JDE package as bulky as it can be, but sometimes business decisions are beyond me and I just don't get it at times.

[Guest.Visitor]

JDE World To JDE OneWorld

I would not worry to much about learning C for one world. One world generates c code and deletes most of it once it is compiled. You do not create C code to work with one world. Rather you use JDE tools to create reports and screens. These generate c code. Sometimes, when you are trying to debug, you may want to look at the c code generated by the tools. Even if you are an experienced C programmer this code is not always clear. One world has thousands of parameters that you have to set, then generate a system. This takes hours and if you find out that you must change a parameter, you have to generate the thing again. Most of the parameters are cryptic and you need an experienced one world person to help set it up. Learning the tools and all the parameters is much more important than learning c.

[Guest.Visitor]

JDE World To JDE OneWorld

Good question David. We have regional offices located in 4 states (hopefully the number of states we do business in will increase) that are screaming for certain business functions to be automated. There are several client server based packages that we have evaluated that handle their needs quite nicely and they all have that "windows look and feel". These packages do not handle all of the functions currently handled by our World software (payroll, HR, etc.) so we have to stick with that for the time being. Meanwhile, JDE has released a OneWorld property management module that is at least up to the task of providing our regional offices with the software solutions they require in a package. It doesn't look as good, IMO, as some of the other packages we looked at but it does have its' advantages. OneWorld software is free and it would not have to be interfaced to our existing World database like a 3rd party solution would have to be. And, given that JDE will drop support for World in a couple years, we would probably have to upgrade to OneWorld anyway so why not go ahead and begin the process and implement the OneWorld modules as we have time over the next few years. This is not to say that moving to OneWorld is going to cost nothing. JDE education and consulting costs are huge. Hardware is another biggie. Integration is the key here.

[Guest.Visitor]

JDE World To JDE OneWorld

Robbie states what I really meant with my not-as-scathing-as-it-coulda-been remarks. The problem with OneWorld at the location I mentioned earlier was not the fault of the IT department. The fault lies with the company making business decisions for IT without giving IT a say in the matter. Obviously without consulting IT, they alienated the department, made inquiries by our firm difficult as IT felt rejected and were really updating resumes after being slighted and of course the use community could not care less about meeting with us as they figured the new package would be able to do it all, 'cause it cost so much. Basically what happened was two IT folks jumped ship in the first two months, the CFO and CEO had to eat some CROW and give good bonuses to keep the three IT folks on board while they decided to NOT implement OneWorld. I agree with Robbie that under proper organization, their would have been no problems with the implemenation (other than normal goofs) and all would have been happy or at least satisfied with the end result. The CFO (whose idea it was in the first place) left after about 8 months for a job elsewhere. Not on real good terms. Alienated his bosses, JDE and their salesstaff by blaming them, and the IT department as well for blaming them. Bottom line? Plan. Plan. Plan. There are quite a few changes, but if implemented properly (Characteristics and all) it can be a 'Semi-painless' function. -bret

[R.Daugherty]

JDE World To JDE OneWorld

"The JDE people have come in and suggest that I learn ILE/C and C++..." Unless you're a really big shop, they wouldn't be JDE direct but resional reps. Why would JDE sales consultants suggest that you learn C and C++? There is so much stupidity involved in that that it's laughable. First, what does that suggest? That the OneWorld app generator creates such buggy code that you're going to have to dig through it to find the bugs, or worse, post modify generated code in C? Do these people have a clue? Second, do they have any idea in the world what the difference between C and C++ is? Unless the app generator is actually generating object code, which I do not believe it does (I think the code is compilable by the C compiler, is it not?), then you have absolute idiots telling you to learn something that is not only much more complex but isn't even used in the product. As for OO wienies telling you whatever about the wondrousnous of OO, fine, humor them, but what does that have to do with dealing with this product if the product is generating C code? My understanding is that OneWorld does support inheritance within the case tool, but again, not only are you not supposed to be in position of looking at the output, the output is probably C. It's hard enough to learn C, and on top of that, you have all these wienies running around saying C++ and then writing C. They're a bunch of yahoos. On top of that, C++ has many issues which Java was created to eliminate, so when some sales dufus says C++ to impress you, they'd better be able to explain the amount of effort involved in that and what role it would play in programming OneWorld. Regards, Ralph

[Guest.Visitor]

JDE World To JDE OneWorld

Don't hold back Ralph. Let it out. What are you really trying to say? My first experience with OneWorld was with an employer not as a consultant. The JDE Salesperson and tech rep that JDE sent down was adamant about our learning C++ so we could manage code. Once again, cooler heads prevailed (After much b*tching, uhm, grumbling) and we learned instead how the environments worked and how to populate and link and extract/use PC library objects. After all the DLOs, inheritance, population and stuff to erode my brain, I was quite happy to be offered a job that consulted green screen World. It gave me a few years to attend proper classes and learn about the product without having it crammed into my head. -bret

[R.Daugherty]

JDE World To JDE OneWorld

"...and learn about the product without having it crammed into my head." and C, much less C++ being crammed in at the same time. Isn't learning OneWorld apps and app development tools a significant enough learning curve of its own? Sounds like you'll be going through it yourself, Bret.... Ralph

[Guest.Visitor]

JDE World To JDE OneWorld

Ralph, Not me. Someone decided to pay me more money to learn Infinium and Friedman. Liked JDE, but well, even an honest merc has his price. -bret

[David Abramowitz]

JDE World To JDE OneWorld

Bret Myrick responded: One we asked many times and the best response was: "Now your JDE environment will be in a GUI Windoze based format." Not a good response but the best one we ever got. That is a sales person's response. It should never be a management response. The correct answer should always (in general terms) be more features; faster response; greater flexibility; greater reliability. The interface is the pervue of the end user, and may be a desired goal. Ease of maintenance, and coding should be the goal of IT. Neither is a management objective. The corollary is: If a new system does not deliver improved information, and does not do so on a timely basis, and is less reliable, and costs more to maintain, has management met its goals and objectives for cost justification? Dave

[Guest.Visitor]

JDE World To JDE OneWorld

I don't know whether this practice is legal or not, but when I was seeking a new position, I was told that after my training (which was at a substantial cost to my prospective employer), that if I were to leave the company before 3 years, I would be required to repay the costs. Kind of scared me, because they did not specify if I would have to reimburse them if I was discharged through no fault of my own. Plus anything can happen in 3 years. But I do understand them wanting to protect their investment. However, I accepted a position with another company, so it became mute point with me.