Re: HP Software

["Dale E. Boyce" <dale@radpro.uchicago.edu>]

It's not easy to come up with a good software solution. If I
understand the original post, what was desired was to replace
an assortment of programs that accomplished what was necessary,
but was probably not as complete or as easy to use as might be
desired.

Creating an "integrated" solution complete with all the bells and
whistles such as bounds checking, master file dependencies, look-ups,
etc. takes far longer to program than simple one task flat file
programs.  I was not shocked at all by the price of HP assistant.
CHAAMP on the other hand, well it is outside what I would want to
spend.  However if I look at what we have invested, even CHAAMP's
steep lease rate doesn't look so bad.  Our homebrew database is
written in Informix and runs on a UNIX system.  It has a lot of
bells and whistles, but is by no means as complete as I would like.
We estimate that we have about two years of programmer time in
the program.  Although probably six months or so of that was getting
comfortable with Informix.  If you figure what even a years worth
of professional time is worth, the cost of commercial packages doesn't
seem so bad, if they accomplish what you need.

It would be interesting to take an informal poll of what people are
using out there.  I would be glad to try to summarise and post if
people would email me with a short description of the software they
are using, the categories of databases that they have (receiving,
shipping, waste, cost recovery, etc.), and perhaps a little self-
evaluation of how complete they feel their implementation is and
how much either in time or money they have invested.  I'll try
to quantify (if I get enough responses) some of the info.  I have
a feeling that an awful lot of resources are being spent duplicating
work that has already be done.  Any discussion on what we might
do as a group to address any of this?

Dale E. Boyce dale@radpro.uchicago.edu