Re: NewEra to exploit Universal Server (fwd)

corinne@asix.com (Corinne Gregory) wrote: :> But have you seen the June 1. issue of Computerworld? :> According to it NewEra 3.0 won't ship until December. December!?? :> And the reason? According to Computerworld it's beeing reworked to run :> under Windows 3.1 - el stupido gigante. :> :> Informix has apperantly listend to those who say they can't upgrade to :> Windows 95/NT - and is delaying the whole thing. :> What kind of an argument is that? If this is true it may be the final :> straw that broke NewEra for us. We will look much more seriously at :> the other alternatives now. :Well, quite frankly, there are LOTS of folks who will not make an :immediate jump to 32-bit platforms. Informix is making a sound business :decision to support a customer base that will remain on 16-bit platforms :for deployment. They are responding to the market -- and the market :bears out that Win95 has not gone ballistic as Microsoft would have us :believe. Yes, i know. (Although we are now talking about 1997 for deployment of applications based on this new release, so it is no longer very immediate, even for a "jump" to 32 bit platforms.) But I am not saying they shouldn't release on Windows 3.1, simply that they should release what they have now, and continue hard work on releasing a 16 bit version as soon as they can. That would have been the sound thing to do bussiness wise. The point is that NewEra 2.0 is a good language, but not a good product overall and the new release is realy needed for Informix to compete. Of course the real reason behind the delay may be that they do not have a releasable version at all, not even for 32 bit, in which case this whole issue is moot. :> Of course a Windows 95/NT version should have been released now, and :> any work Informix wanted to do to make it run on ancient technology :> could have been done afterwards, or in parallell by someone else. :Again, it's not "ancient" technology...it's a platform we -- and many :of our clients, coworkers and associates, are choosing to retain. And, :if Informix chooses to continue to do multi-platform support via on :code stream, they do need to reengineer the product prior to release. :It ain't pretty, but I don't see many alternatives. The alternative is as stated above. As far as I know there are three main reasons for not upgrading to Windows 95/NT: 1. Your hardware isn't up to it. (386 or small 486 machines). In this case it's very doubtfull that the hardware can run a New Era application (runtime, *not* development), so this probably isn't an issue when it comes to NewEra support for 16 bit Windows. 2. You have other applications, DOS or old Windows that doesn't run on Windows 95/NT. This reason is obviously valid, and makes a 16 bit version of NewEra interesting. 3. You get a support problem when users are upgraded. This is also to some extent valid, and may lead to the desition to delay. May be you want to bypass Windows 95 and go to NT. In that case there are very good reasons to want to wait. Going to 95 now and NT later would lead to a significant extra support burdon. All I can say is that from personal experience, upgrading 120 users in one organisation from Windows 3.1 to 95, is that the problems of doing it are small, and the world changes significantly to the better aftewards. With other words, there will be a 16 bit market for NewEra for some time yet. BUT: We are talking about a half year delay. That's become a very long time in this bussiness. For those who have finished NewEra applications it may not take to long to move them to the new version but we are talking about sometime in 1997 even for these. More people will have upgraded to 32 bit. Also if you plan to use some of the new facilities in the new version, that will take time. The 16 bit market will have become smaller. If we are talking about new customers deployment will be in mid to late 1997 (when the applications have been developed). What does the market for Windows 3.1 applications look like then? Again, don't get me wrong. I have nothing against a 16 bit version. We simply want NewEra 3.0 to be released as soon as possible. There is another issue with working on a 16 bit version though. ActiveX (OLE) support is overdue by now. This can't be supported in Windows 3.1, so we will be talking about two different versions of NewEra. Hopefully Informix will not delay the support of ActiveX. They are also talking about Java support. This is also a 32 bit only issue, important and hopefully not delayed. There are several other things that are hard or impossible to do under Windows 3.1 that might criple NewEra if Informix deside that 16 bit support is the most important parameter. They will with other words have to make a special version of NewEra for Windows 3.1 with several limitations as compared to the 32 bit version. If they don't the limitations as compared to what could have been there will be so severe that NewEra will hardly be interesting as a 32 bit development tool. :> Another reason given in the article is that NewEra has to be :> revamped to accommodate the nonstandard data types used in Illustra. :> What kind of reasoning is this? How can this be true? That must be :> possible to do in a followup release. Informix has all the time braged :> about the extensibility via class libraries, and now they claim to :> have to delay the one most important release so far to put in such :> extensions. Where earlier statements incorrect? :NewEra is intended to support the Datablade technology that will be :utilized in Universal Server. Hence, real tight coupling for any :data type the market can dream up. The claim that 3.0 is "important" :is very true...so why wait another year to integrate something that :provides incredible extensibility? That's something I don't believe :ANY other vendor -- tool or database -- can offer as a "today" :solution. I'd call that thinking ahead. But the point isn't to wait another year (for another release). The point is to release what they have now, and implement this extremely interesting functionality in upgrades in perhaps half a year. A release now doesn't have to mean there will be no new functionality for a year. With the pace of the industry Informix will probably have to do this anyway. And at least many of the upgrades will probably be possible to release as plug in class libraries, so they don't need to make a complete new release. Another issue here is that a lot of such new functionality will be much simpler to implement in a 32 bit version. Having to make it run in 16 bit mode will make the work much harder in many cases. Do you want Informix to do this, and delay the whole thing even further? What is Informix up to? Nils.Myklebust@ccmail.telemax.no NM Data AS, P.O.Box 9090 Gronland, N-0133 Oslo, Norway My opinions are those of my company