Re: Old fat guys coming and going

Yesterady, one Tim from UK informed us of the following: > Hi > > October 97 issue of Computing has the following quote from Jeff Hudson:- > > "Among the casualties of the scaling down, as well as people, will be > the object-orientated development tool, NewEra." > > Hudson also had some bad news for NewEra customers: there will be no new > versions of the OO development tool. > > "..you have to be brain dead to think that a database company also needs > its own proper tools for the database. Java and Visual Basic have become > the standards. We will continue to support the current NewEra customers. > We encourage users of I-4gl to migrate to the industry standards." To which, Billy Wheeler commented: > > ...And appointing > people who say things like "you've got to be brain dead to develop > your own application development environment." > > In fact, if I may digress for a moment, the fat head who made that > observation has clearly forgotten the history of that useless and > insignificant product, Informix-4GL. I mean, was that a pointless > product, or what? Clearly Informix *don't* know how to write decent > tools.... <grrrrr> I think he took it rather well. Now, assuming that the quote is authentic (Christine?), and forgetting about the highly inappropriate wording (even though, in this particular case, it might be appropriate - yes Billy, this definitely *is* a flame bait ;-), I think that this one statement goes to prove that there still are a couple of things to iron out, at Informix. For starters, this statement, and one from Paula Hawtorn regarding the future of 4gl (see the ATE transcription at http://www.iiug.org/techinfo/ate_tran.html) seem to be a tiny bit in contrast with one of Bob Finocchio's goals: *increase sales*. The competition has tools that are emerging as standards, so we'll gracefully leave them open field. Our partners are building clones of our tools that are better than the originals, so we'll let them make huge money out of those. Well, even though I have evaluated 4j's compiler on my notebook (easy - no mention of the fab OS I'm using on it :-) and found it to be a truly excellent product, my company is not going to buy it. We want the original, and for two good reasons: if we want to stay 100% compatible with I-4gl (and I think there are sound reasons for that, the first being the installed base of the two products), using 4j's enhancements is out of the question. Next, these tools are 100% compatible at the 4gl level, but certainly not in the c interface, and below. We use a number of hacks (a bad thing to do, for sure, but we saw no enhancements in years) to implement a couple of features not present in the language - like printing byte data (see the faq), and we certainly don't want to start hacking again for that, or give up the functionality. Instead, we would very much like to see enhancements in the original tool, and I think my company is not alone in this desire (Boy, am I glad to hear that 4gl may have made it back to enhancement mode). Next, engines alone will not keep Informix afloat. I might be wrong, but one of the reasons for the current state of affairs to me is the lack of tool sales. Is Oracle selling engines only? And MS tools? No. MS is pushing *real hard* mSQL, toghether with Visual basic. As a last consideration, this statement clearly states that New Era marketing has not been quite right: the competition has a standard we do not, in other words the competition has sold millions, we haven't. More than that, it clearly states (once again) that Informix is prepared to turn its back on the customers if a tool does not meet their marketing expectations. Now, this not only is a truly negative signal to the market (New Era today, ODS for IUS tomorrow), but its an insult to customers who have paid Informix, in licensing and support, orders of magnitude more than what they would have paid to have the "competition's standard" to get something that only now is starting to become what should have been when it was first marketed. New Era a scaling down casualty? If I were a New Era user (which I'm not, luckily) I would be downright outraged, like I was back when it was 4gl turn. Breach of contract that is, no less. During the last few months, many Informix-List and Linux-Informix readers have asked for better market understanding and customer care and feeding from Informix. In light of this and of all the good intentions Informix has shown since Bob F. arrival, I think Informix position on New Era should be revised, in the opposite direction. Time for a new InxUtil column, eh, Billy? Ciao, Marco _______________________________________________________________________________ Marco Greco, Catania, Italy marcog@linux.ctonline.it rem radioterapia +39 95 447828 fax 446558 Informix faq http://www.iiug.org/techinfo/faq/informix.htm 4glworks http://www.ctonline.it/~marcog Informix on Linux http://www.ctonline.it/~marcog/ifmxlinux.htm