A quick survey for MultiValue developers

[Bob Markowitz]

What type projects are you working on TODAY?

    1.  The creation on new applications and apps

    2.   Maintenance of old applications

    3.   Modernization of old applications

What technologies are you using in your project?

[MAV]

Hi Bob

We (INGESCO Sistemas Informáticos) are working in 1 and 3.

We are using .NET (Winforms and Xamarin), ReactJS and tools as PowerBI. On the server side, we use a lot of python an Node libraries.

Marcos Alonso Vega

INGESCO Sistemas Informáticos

[Tony Gravagno]

yes, no, yes, lots, mostly JavaScript/TypeScript+React for new stuff plus lots of PHP for WordPress.

I dunno if you want more info. Why Bob? What's on your mind? LOL

[Bob Markowitz]

Thanks MAV and Tony. Anybody else have anything to say. What an open question. Of course this group doesn't respond to my postings anymore because I push Evoke and all Evoke can do is to increase company profitability and contribute to company growth - see low-code benefits :-) 

[geneb]

On Mon, 24 May 2021, Bob Markowitz wrote:

> because I push Evoke and all Evoke can do is to increase company
> profitability and contribute to company growth - see low-code benefits :-)
>

Snake oil pushers are never shrinking violets.

g.

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[Will Johnson]

Maintenance, but mostly that is because we are moving off Universe within the next year.

And that I'm retiring

[Bob Markowitz]

Oh no, Will, you are one of the stalwarts within the Pick community. Did the city buy a package and think they can replicate all the business logic you and your associates have created over the years?

Best of the best to you and another Pick organization bites the dust :-(

[Tony Gravagno]

Hey Gene - joking aside, there is no comparison between snake oil and Evoke. I need to convey my sentiment from the point of view of someone who does not use it yet due to Bluefinity's rules for developers.

Snake oil doesn't do anything, and the people who sell it are slimy. Evoke does a lot, and Bob is not slimy.

In this industry we don't see anything about Low-code/No-code, except from Bob. That leads some locals to wonder what the hell this is and why it should mean anything to us. In the mainstream, low-code/no-code is getting a lot of traction. Evoke stands to do a lot better outside of MV than in this industry. I think it would be a worthy endeavor, for someone looking to exit MV and go mainstream with C# and RDBMS, to get familiar with Evoke. From there it might be possible to come back here to offer related products or services that might not be immediately apparent. And/Or, following the mantra "we sell applications, not databases", here is a great chance to create modern front-end applications using MV, on-site or as SaaS, and just not deal with issues about database choices. If someone really cares about the database, port to jBase or MVON and run over a RDBMS using MV BASIC rules.

Evoke is a really nice product. I know this, having worked with the developers and some components early on, and having seen the product in action in their demos. It can be used to create web apps and mobile apps without having to get into the mud about JS frameworks, device nuances, and hybrid tools.

I'm spending a lot of time these days with those other tools, and I'm not enjoying it. Everything is a research project. But I'm also cheap, not funded by an employer or other corporate entity with pockets. I'm not willing to shell out a lot of my own money to Bluefinity to pay for the opportunity to see exactly how much time and money that tooling will save me over time. I suspect this one policy is the only thing that has prevented Evoke from becoming a serious industry go-to platform. In all of these discussions I don't recall seeing any solid complaints about product, only the business model. Let's give them heat for that business choice, but I see no reason at all to disparage the software itself.

HTH, IMHO, YMMV, TYVM, EIEIO,

T

[Bob Markowitz]

Now I know why I like Tony! Speaking of low-code/no-code in the mainstream...

[Tom Marracci]

I'm probably being naive, but low-code/no-code seems an awful lot like RAD to me.

 

I have a lot of self imposed pressure to modernize our green screen application, but time to plan, develop, test, and implement is fleeting.  low-code/no-code seems like a fair alternative, but since I can't try it, I can't assess how much time, talent, and treasure will be required to make it work for us.

 

Tom

 

 

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[Bob Markowitz]

Hi Tom - Anytime you want to see a demo please let me know. You can also watch some canned ones at https://www.bluefinity.com/evokevideo.php.

[Tom Marracci]

Hi Bob,

 

I've seen the demo and the video but it doesn't help me assess how it would work, what would be involved, or what it would cost in man hours and my time to make it fit our system.

 

If I could experiment with one of my screens, even on a timed trial basis, then I could get a better idea of what I would be getting myself into.

 

Tom

 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mvdbms/7224afd5-0c32-44a8-8b46-f127f02861c5n%40googlegroups.com.

[MAV]

Hi BOB

Why isn't there a one-month trial version like other products? I would download it, I would try it, I would evaluate and it if it solves my problems, I would buy it. Simple app videos don't help me make that decision. I want to know if it works for MY applications, and that I can only know by testing the tool.

Marcos Alonso Vega

INGESCO Sistemas Informáticos

[Martyn]

OpenInsight 10 for both updating my old systems and for creating new systems.

[Martyn]

Hi Mav and anyone else who is interested,

If you would like to try one of the leading (RAD, Low code, whatever the latest buzz word is) MV development tools for GUI Desktop and web based systems, please head over to www.revelation.com and you can get a totally free and unrestricted evaluation version of OpenInsight 10. It comes with free support during the evauation period, we have freely available YouTube tutorial videos (we are currently working on an update for our forthcoming OI10.1 release), technical blogs and the online public discussion forum, all of which is freely available to help you to take your first steps with OpenInsight.

We believe in providing developers with market leading RAD tools from day one and not brick walls that require you to engage with a salesperson before you get access.  If the tools are intuitive enough (like OpenInisght is), most developers will find their way around them.  Of course, we hope that you will engage with us, but that choice remains your own.

Give it a try sometime.  Or, if you would like to see what can be built in a couple of weeks for the desktop, give me a call.  I'm not into O4W yet for web based solutions, but that will be coming really soon once I get the latest desktop training videos completed.

Best regards,
Martyn
RevUK

On Friday, May 28, 2021 at 8:08:41 AM UTC+1 MAV wrote:

[Tom Marracci]

Martyn,

 

I would love to give it a try but I can't find anywhere how to set it up to link to D3.

 

Could you point me in the right direction?

 

Tom

 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mvdbms/225f49ad-ab71-479c-a321-0237690c55ddn%40googlegroups.com.

[Bob Markowitz]

Gentlemen and Ladies – I am going to respond to each comment in this discussion. I will point out what I believe to be misconceptions, misrepresentations and misunderstandings of what BlueFinity’s Evoke is offering to the MultiValue (and mainstream) community. Warning, this posting will be very long but I believe it will bring some clarity as to why we do what we do including why we do not offer evaluation copies of Evoke; what the mainstream software development world is doing and why they do what they do; how the MultiValue community can accomplish the same as the mainstream world; what the leading market research companies say about low-code and Digital Transformation; a link to a webinar from  Zoho discussing Digital Transformation and low-code that might add to the clarity this posting provides, session recording; a link to a daily newsletter’s website The Low-code Daily that offers a daily digest of news and articles from the world's leading providers of Low-code and No-code application development platforms and the benefits offered by low-code. They have published stories about Evoke.

I am going to break this posting into two because it is sooooooooooooo long. I hope that you read both. Part one today, Part two on Tuesday.

I am going to start with Tom and MAV because they present the same issue in differing ways. We do not offer an evaluation version of Evoke because we fully integrate our app development with the database backends as well as with the business logic. Add to that Evoke is Microsoft centric and we use Visual Studio as our IDE – please note that the Developer does not need to understand or even enter VS. There is a checkbox the Developer can click that jumps to VS, does the “compile” and returns to Evoke development.

Evoke and Visual Studio gets loaded on the Developer’s computer just like any other app, the free Community Edition is fine. We make sure that everything Evoke needs was downloaded with VS. If not, we download those missing pieces from Microsoft. We make sure that there is a connection to the database(s – MV, Oracle, SQL, whatever). We then create the first design with the Developer. The process usually takes 1 ½ hours and the user has created their first working app. The application source code gets loaded on the developer’s computer. It is Microsoft VS and Xamarin Studio projects, nothing proprietary.

Insofar as development time for an app there are numerous published reports that development times are up to 20 times faster than long-hand coding. We have an Oracle developer that spent about one-man year developing an Oracle app. Oracle in their wisdom decided to stop supporting some of the features in the app. The developer was once a Pickie. He was an old jBASE customer of mine that left Pick for Oracle because his marketplace required it. I kept bothering him to try Evoke. He decided to give it a go. Including learning time, he recreated and deployed the app to his customers in less than six weeks. Again, I say, including learning time. He is willing to speak with everyone.

Revelation, please stop comparing OpenInsight ”…Low code, whatever the latest buzz word is...” to low-code platforms. OpenInsight contains a proprietary RAD tool specifically developed for MV, nothing to do with low-code.

Forrester predicts that in 2021, 75% of application development shops will use low-code platforms [1].

Low-code platforms will be responsible for more than 65% of application development by 2024. [2].

There are a ton of reasons why mainstream development is adopting low-code development. All of them apply to MultiValue as well…and with that I end part one. Everyone have a great weekend.

[Tony Gravagno]

I think Low-code is the new RAD, but I attribute a nuance to the new wave. There has been a trend of late to attract young developers with the ploy of coding being easy, drag n drop, and other trivializations. Of course the reality is far from the hype and those who perpetuate the fantasy are only doing the next generation a dis-service. However, there are many tools now that make drag n drop more valuable, in that more is done than in the past.

To be specific, in the past and now, we could drag n drop a control on a form, then look at the generated declarative markup. From there we have a properties panel, a code-behind module, and other resources available to integrate the control into the project. But that drag n drop thing was about all of the "Rapid" we could get in the Rapid Application Development. The same goes for tools created in the MV world. They do a lot for us, but they only go so far.

With low-code ("no code" is not realistic but it's good marketing, so whatevah) a lot more is done for us. We tell the environment about the front-end and back-end, and a ton of code is generated for us. This is the job that has traditionally been done by ORM packages, but most of them have only focused on data and related CRUD. The modern low-code platform generates the front-end like RAD, and generates the back-end like ORM.

Further, with a platform like Evoke, because of its base in Xamarin, we get the source generated for thick client, thin client, and full mobile iOS and Android (not hybrid), and the entire project is configured to be built for us. In addition, and not unique but certainly of the utmost value, Evoke has well-structured design patterns for incorporation of custom code, for final tweaks on whatever is not done for us out of the box. So, it's RAD for the UI development, ORM for the CRUD, and much much more. What is somewhat unique, though now becoming more of a norm in the industry is the ability to operate in off-line mode. So if you're entering a transaction on a device while you're in an elevator, basement, or on the farm, and there's no network, the mechanisms are built-in to keep the application going until you're back online, and then it auto-syncs.Now, for us MV fans, Evoke also supports MV and generates the same kind of ORM code for the back-end as it does for the front - this is in addition to the CRUD that it generates for RDBMS.

I'm in the same boat with the rest of you. I can't get my hands on this tool without paying for it, and that hasn't happened yet. I'm neither a client, a vendor, nor a paid shill. My experience is from research, Q&A, and some work I did for Bluefinity early-on. I appreciate Evoke for its potential and I'll defend it against misconceptions and unsubstantiated claims as best I can, because I truly believe that it's well-developed and very capable. Also like most of you though, I can't truly sing the praises or speak from experience until I can actually use it, and I share the same frustration with the business model as everyone else.

I just had a Great idea! If we can get a few companies here to sponsor a purchase, I'll get Evoke, develop expertise, and serve as your resources for ongoing development until you decide to do a full purchase for yourself. The more companies we have involved the easier it is for everyone. I'll even credit whatever you put in with actual development time. So let's put some noggins and wallets together. :)

(OK, maybe not such a great idea but better than the nothing sandwich we've been eating for the last few years.)

HTH

T

[James A]

"I'll get Evoke, develop expertise, and serve as your resources for ongoing development until you decide to do a full purchase for yourself. "

I've considered evaluating Evoke for my client DocMagic but I've been swamped with other projects. Maybe we can discuss this next week...

- James

 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mvdbms/d452944e-423d-4fdd-8871-9660ddf2457cn%40googlegroups.com.

[Martyn]

Hi Tom,

Sorry for the delay, it is a bank holiday here in the UK and I have only juts managed to jump onto my machine.  When you install OpenInsight you should have a Document folder and in there will be a document called  'OpenInsight 10 for MV Quick Start Guide.pdf'.  That should give you everything that you need.  If you wish to email me (martyn@<removethisbit>@revsoft.co.uk I will gladly email you a copy by return of email.  If that still does not help you, I will be happy to get one of our support technicians to help you.

Best regards,

Martyn.

[Martyn]

Revelation, please stop comparing OpenInsight ”…Low code, whatever the latest buzz word is...” to low-code platforms. OpenInsight contains a proprietary RAD tool specifically developed for MV, nothing to do with low-code.

We work solely in the MV world, with tools specifically designed for the MV world and which enable developers to build and deploy systems very quickly.  When I have finished the OI10 desktop course videos and then the OI10 web course videos, I just might do a long video of what can be achieved with no code.  It'll be interesting to see how far we can go without touching a line of code, so building the database, maintaining the database, building MDI forms and calling child windows, building data bound forms, record lookup windows with search functionality (Popups), populating combo controls, creating messages, help files, reports and more.  I'll bet that we can have a basic data save, query and retrieval system with reports with zero code.

It might not fit your (or the wider compuer industries) definition of 'Low Code', but it sure fits mine for the MV world and that is the world where I work and play.

M.

[Bob Markowitz]

Well Martyn, I accept your definition of “Low Code” as it applies to OpenInsight. Does your MV specific definition of low-code therefore also apply to SB/XA and mvDesigner and DesignBais and ScreenDriver and Osmosis and let's not forget about Forge and Blacksmith as well?

Insofar as my (mainstream) definition of “Low Code”, more to come. And no-code? I gotta talk to Tony G about his comment, "(no code is not realistic but it's good marketing, so whatevah)". 

I was going to continue my rant from last week but lots of stuff is in the way. I will try for tomorrow. All stay well.

[Will Johnson]

Yes they are replacing our single integrated system, hand-tuned over the past thirty-five years

We will get a disintegrated set of about fifteen different systems from different vendors, to handle all our disparate needs

For the low cost of about twenty million dollars... or something

I'm hoping to retire before the waste products hit the waste-product-dispersal system

[Peter McMurray]

Hi all. I find it fascinating yet sad that people are arguing about tools. The issue is DataBase Design. The UK NHS recently blew 11 billion Pounds, that is 15.4 billion $us on a failed system design. We have all the tools we need but they will never sell without marketing. Marketing requires a target market. The target market is young developers who need to be taught the basics of design and have to be able to use the tools at universities and colleges. Oracle gave the product away Pick suppliers hid it and stole each others customers. Pick Database is still brilliant, simple, multi-dimensional but who knows about it!! Just like Will Johnson our system will die with us despite the fact that it does everything a distribute needs including current value cost accounting in the violently fluctuating oil market. We are now in "The Fourth Turning" (get the book) be ready for 2025.

[Will Johnson]

Peter you have addressed the very issue I was trying to get someone else to recognize in another thread.

It's not the tools.  It's the people who *use* the tools, buy the tools, recommend the tools

That's the audience that Pick missed thirty years ago.

That's why we are on our last legs today

[Bob Markowitz]

I apologize, too much happening. Will try for the continuation post tomorrow.

[Bob Markowitz]

I had to create a new blog because we have been remiss and too busy for the last few months. It is called,  STOP MAKING EXCUSES ABOUT WHY YOU WON’T MODERNIZE YOUR MULTIVALUE LEGACY APPLICATIONS AND ADD INTEGRATED MOBILE APPS.  Click on it, you might learn something.

 https://evoke.blog/2021/06/08/stop-making-excuses-about-why-you-wont-modernize-your-multivalue-legacy-applications-and-add-integrated-mobile-apps/. 

[Will Johnson]

Isn't the primary "excuse" - "I don't make that decision"

Programmers, analysts, I.T. is sometimes ignored by owners, managers, boards - when making decisions like that

[Bob Markowitz]

Hi Will – Not really. Evoke is about development speed; create once, deploy everywhere; modernity; agility; return on investment; on and on. There is an abundance of horror stories about companies that have tried to modernize their Pick legacy applications and failed. There is a fear of failure; Pick Developers do not want to be pointed to as the initiators of failure. There is the skepticism of Pick Developers in not believing what I say. There are Pick Developers seeking freebees and if they don’t get it then there must be something wrong with the product. Pick Developers don’t want to tell their management that there is a product out there that will significantly speed up development effort; deliver modernity; do it at lower costs over a one-year, five-year span than any projects ever worked on. Hey, if new apps can be delivered in weeks and not months or years what will management think of me? Will I be forced to retire early? When company management learns about and investigates Evoke, we get customers.

We offer companies a “Seed app”.  A Seed app is based on the functional and technical requirements of the first app a client decides to deploy and it is designed to be completed and delivered for a fixed price of $3,000. We usually deliver within a week. It takes much less time but our people have lots to do. I have been told by a customer that he had estimates from his staff for a mobile app that would take months to deliver.

The Pick community has been paranoid but thank goodness some of that paranoia has been fading and Pick Developers are discovering ways to use the backend to deliver modern front-end user B2B and B2C customer and user experiences. And it is not by using RESTful Web Services!

[KeithDBMS]

Bob,

 

We do all 3 if you consider adding new features and modules as “creation of new applications and apps”.

 

Here is my overall issue with all add-on and development “tools”.   They are all software.  At some point, all software has bugs, even in published releases.  As a developer and/or owner and distributor of a software product, every proprietary layer we add as a “tool” or component part of the product becomes an opportunity for a failure point that is effectively out of our control or ability to repair, but is still our problem to solve as far as our end user customer is concerned.

 

Complicate that with pricing changes by the provider of said tool and it is a recipe for continuing stress and chaos.

 

Then comes the finger pointing!

 

I already long for the days of Pick systems being the only non, “ in-house “ place to call with an issue.  Now there is Microsoft, Linux, ISP problems, device issues and a myriad of 3^rd party software and hardware suppliers to deal with who have necessarily become part of the delivered product solution mix,  in addition to Rocket and our in-house staff.

 

Our end users are smaller type retail stores who have little or no in-house expertise in diagnosis and repair of “computer problems” and we are call number one, regardless of whether or not our application is actually the problem, and it rarely is.

 

Granted, we have used AccuTerm and Wintegrate to successfully pretty up our 30+ year old product, but the aspects of those two apps we use have been pretty much bulletproof.  Additionally, it needs to be said that the resources we had to employ to incorporate those two options was minimal in the big scheme of things.  Also, should a problem occur with one of those, it is simply a presentation layer issue and poses no threat to data integrity.  Even so, changes to AccuTerm’s business and pricing model have posed a potential threat to our own support/subscription pricing model.

 

We have always “wished and hoped”, for whatever those are worth, that Rocket would incorporate a native GUI into the D3 product, but we all know how that worked out via at least one aborted attempt or two.  Luckily Rocket stayed in their lane as a database provider, since it is where their expertise lies.

 

With the old adage of “fool me once, shame on you…fool me twice, shame on me” in mind, and coupled with 30+ years of developing properly functioning code, you can imagine how foreboding it seems for us to adopt any paradigm that injects yet another 3^rd party problem set.

 

On the flip side, we can certainly understand how anyone contemplating development of a new product from scratch would entertain any and all development tools from the beginning.

 

Good Luck with the product.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From: mvd...@googlegroups.com <mvd...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of MAV
Sent: Friday, May 21, 2021 3:48 AM
To: Pick and MultiValue Databases <mvd...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [mvdbms] Re: A quick survey for MultiValue developers

 

Hi Bob

 

We (INGESCO Sistemas Informáticos) are working in 1 and 3.

 

We are using .NET (Winforms and Xamarin), ReactJS and tools as PowerBI. On the server side, we use a lot of python an Node libraries.

 

Marcos Alonso Vega

INGESCO Sistemas Informáticos

 

 

El jueves, 20 de mayo de 2021 a las 20:39:58 UTC+2, bob.ma...@bluefinity.com escribió:

What type projects are you working on TODAY?

    1.  The creation on new applications and apps

    2.   Maintenance of old applications

    3.   Modernization of old applications

What technologies are you using in your project?

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[Bob Markowitz]

Hi Keith - We are pretty good with "bugs". On those very rare occasions when we create them, we fix them. When the problem is with Microsoft (we are Microsoft centric) or other 3rd party standard technologies we incorporate, we hold the customer's hand and find the workarounds, note the word "we". We are extremely customer focused, just ask our users. A couple of other things. If your small retail customers are looking to have a retail website like Amazon, Evoke creates it in 3 days and yes, it contains shopping carts and payment options. Creating the data like descriptions and pictures however...

When you are planning to expand your offerings please give me a call. We can discuss how you can make more money providing Evoke developed apps to your customers and prospects. Stay well.

[joseba]

Hi Keith, There are many approaches to this. One is what Bob says, but there are more. For instance, our "solution" was to create Linkar (actually convert our internal tools into one package). Linkar is a swiss knife for the mv world. First of all, it is cheap ($62 + $19 year maintenance) per session, with session pooling and there are a free Lite version that almost includes everything (except the REST API). Linkar does not create apps, Linkar gives you tools. You have different OpenSource frameworks (.Net, java, node.js...) You can use Visual Studio Code with D3 BASIC, you can create web services easily and you can use them even without a web server and so on. Probably you cannot create a mobile app in 3 days with Linkar, but you can use Angular or VUE and create a mobile application with IONIC and Capacitor (very popular tools in the mobile world) or Xamarin in .Net.... Tools.

You can also create interfaces so other apps "talk" with your MV system easily (for instance our plugging for Power BI).

And Linkar runs on Windows, Linux and MacOS, you choose.

You can download Linkar Lite and use it, or ask for an evaluation licence on our web to test Linkar during one month, or.... 

Take a look at kosday.com

joseba real de asua

[Will Johnson]

So you say Not Really and then blame the developers.

Actually *no one* consulted me when our systems were proposed to be twilighted.

No one.

So there you go.

[Bob Markowitz]

Will, I would never blame Developers. OK, maybe a little bit. Some of my best friends were and are Developers/Programmers. Hell, I taught programming albeit “RPL” and TCL about 2 million years ago and was even sucked into writing an accounts receivable invoice entry program by Tim Holland. That one program made me part of the Developer community. It was when early Pickies not only sold product but did programming too. 

As you said, Developers do not make decisions BUT for some reason Pick Developers seem more reluctant to investigate alternative solutions than main stream. And knowledge would allow Pickies to better serve themselves and the organizations that pay them and maybe, just maybe they might get involved in decision making processes.

[Tony Gravagno]

This subthread is fascinating to me. It's true that a lot of decision makers do not include MVDBMS staff in the discussion process. In almost all cases, by the time I get a request for services from a MV site, it's about migration, because the decisions have already been made.

I think the separation of MV IT from higher level management occurs over time because MV people have been so proud of implementing their own little solutions in their own little way. They convey the impression that they can do everything and that it's not necessary to bring in any new tools. But if only green-screen solutions come from IT and the MV guys, then management will not ask them about GUI or mobile or BI or AI or anything modern and mainstream. MV people are so proud of being able to do so much with a small staff, but management sees that as a liability: "Who else knows this stuff? We can't continue to rely on this one guy for all of our IT needs, especially when he keeps talking about retirement." And when management feels they can't look to IT for solutions, it's easy to see the next decisions being made to replace the IT staff and technology. Management people don't want to have to make decisions about IT. They want to leave it to their IT people who they are paying for solutions that respond to current and future needs. It's only when IT remains entrenched in yesterday that management needs to step in. "Lead, follow, or get out of the way."

So for those here who want to avoid this common scenario, you need to reposition your IT department from being responsive to being pro-active. If you lament not being a part of the decision process, take active steps toward getting your department involved in that process. Ask to get into company meetings where management is discussing new challenges, strategies, tactical initiatives, marketing campaigns, consumer feedback, and concerns of the supply chain. If you offer modern solutions to modern problems, you won't be replaced by someone else who provides modern solutions to modern problems. (Um, duh.)

You can only offer modern solutions if you are aware of them. If you are not, ensure that you have staff or consulting resources who can sit in the meetings with you, to translate requirements into internal IT discussion about what can then be proposed to management. That is, if you want to survive in IT, you need to transition from being just a programmer or other grunt resource to actually being a manager who manages the information technology of the company, and all related technical initiatives and agenda. That means bringing people into your department who know and do the things that you do not. If you aren't going to write the code, get others who will. If you don't do either of these things, and adapt to the environment, then don't be surprised when the Darwinian evolution kicks in and your species goes extinct.

"But if I bring in new people or technology I'll draw attention to the IT budget and management will start to think about replacing us." Hey, pick your battles more judiciously. If the company is considering migration, they know it's going to cost them a fortune to replace everything. Become a partner in the process of discussing the challenges and options. Discuss the realistic budget required to sustain what the company wants and needs. Don't try to stay off the budget radar - you see where that gets you. If the company says they want something and you tell them the budget for getting them exactly what they want (with technology that properly addresses it), you will be in a position to discuss refinement of the needs and budgets. This is far better than not being in the discussion at all.

And to be clear, being a real partner with your company in modernization means you have the ability to keep MV relevant in the process. No matter what your prior experience, you (collective "you" includes your hired/contracted staff) can use tools like Evoke or Designbais or Linkar along with mainstream tools And with the MV environment. You need to convey that message to management, that your MV platform is no different from any RDBMS. When management wants to replace the MV environment or the IT staff, they don't care what the underlying database is. To paraphrase the mantra here "end-users buy applications, not databases." You don't need to hide MV, and it's actually self-defeating to do so. Just make sure that management recognizes that the specific tools in your stack are not relevant - and that they occasionally change as required. What is relevant is that you can and do respond to whatever challenges the company has, with whatever tooling is required to get that job done. It's lack of confidence from management that this state exists which leads to their decisions to replace the existing department, tools, and people who support it.

Mmmmm, OK, and sometimes they're just stupid or biased to spend a lot of money with specific people for whatever reason. :)

T

bob wrote:

As you said, Developers do not make decisions BUT for some reason Pick Developers seem more reluctant to investigate alternative solutions than main stream. And knowledge would allow Pickies to better serve themselves and the organizations that pay them and maybe, just maybe they might get involved in decision making processes.