For a unique perspective on the Spectrum 2005 exhibition and conference, Spectrum magazine asked Tony Gravagno, president of Nebula Research and Development, to be the “man on the scene,” giving readers an overall review of show and conference happenings. Here, he shares his insights and observations about trends, new products and the newsmakers that emerged at the Spectrum 2005 show. The recent Spectrum conference confirms that our market continues to spawn a wealth of competent products from around the world to address the needs of the user base. If you haven’t been to a Spectrum show recently, then you’re depriving yourself of an opportunity to get inspired with new possibilities to satisfy your data processing needs.There were over 30 exhibitors represented at this show.All of the MV DBMS providers were present. Most of the familiar product and service vendors had a booth, though some familiar brands were not present, and we noticed a few newcomers. I was very pleased to see unexpected colleagues from the U.K., South Africa, Australia, and other countries. I hear at least 11 countries were represented.
This show introduced the new Database Challenge (see article by Clifton Oliver). It will be very interesting to see how this challenge develops at future shows. Whether people come for the prizes, the challenge, product marketing, or just the adrenalin rush, this will certainly be a show highlight. Speaking of prizes, the treasure trove of giveaways by exhibitors was simply amazing. A new seminar format was tried for some sessions. Vendors had the usual one hour of introduction and product marketing, and then an extra two hours was provided for an “Extended Technical Session.”This was a good opportunity for people to spend quality time with developers to learn about their chosen products, or to get an in-depth look at products being considered. There was a pleasant buzz of conversation around the exhibit hall but not the normal boisterous activity that we often find at these shows.Over the last two years vendors have done a lot of shows in the USA, Australia, and the U.K. It was good for Spectrum to do the overseas tour again, to renew and revitalize relationships and interest in our market offerings, and some vendors tell me these shows proved to be time and money well spent. But some vendors are simply burned out. The schedule for this year and next is less aggressive, and I’m guessing exhibitors and attendees alike will see more value in fewer and bigger upcoming shows. With the marathon of shows as a reference, many end users and developers who didn’t come to this show thought there wasn’t going to be much new to see at this one. There were, in fact, a number of new sessions at this show, and some attendees were seriously torn between this interesting session or that. But a few vendor sessions didn't offer much more than what could be presented in a booth. People come to these shows to see the exhibitors, but the conference fee is mostly for the presentations where people get inspiration for new development. For upcoming shows, perhaps vendors should advertise more in-depth sessions on product use and technology profiles, and reserve "first contact" marketing for the exhibit hall. This should bring more attendees to the show, create more buzz around the booths, and make it more worthwhile for everyone to participate.
As an example, Nathan Rector had two sessions for an unbiased education on .NET. The first session, "Do you need it?", overflowed with around 50 attendees. This is a clear sign that our colleagues hunger for solid information to make their development decisions. In the second session, Nathan described .NET at a more detailed level. As can be expected, the crowd was much smaller, around 12. Armed with unbiased information,some people were able to go speak with vendors as more informed consumer/ prospects, and others finally had enough data to realize they really didn’t need .NET at all.That’s the sort of thing that I think draws people to Spectrum.We get the pulse of our own market, see where colleagues and competitors are going, and see where end users might be taking us. We want to go home with enough data to move forward, at least until the next Spectrum conference. The MV DBMS vendors should start considering their strategy, as they will soon be faced with a highly successful competitor, a proven marketing machine that intends to migrate MV users and developers to a platform that is familiar and economical, and much more acceptable in the mainstream.So what’s new with .NET? jBASE and BlueFinity (both subsidiaries of Mpower1 International Ltd.) are rolling out mv.NET. This is a class library, now in direct competition with the Pick Data Provider .NET from Raining Data.Comparing the products, mv.NET supports more MV DBMS platforms, has some nice extra features, and has a competitive pricing model. FusionWare also announced a new distribution agreement with BlueFinity for mv.NET. Demonstrating the value of a PDP.NET application, Raining Data’s new offering allows D3 and U2 databases to closely integrate with Microsoft Reporting Services. Sites with extensive reporting needs should take some time to understand how Reporting Services can play a role in their operation. IBM continues to offer the free UniObjects. NET, and for more robust applications, Paul Batten from AdvancedWare was available to discuss .NET connectivity via IBM’s RedBack, and his software based on that combination. Luke Bucklin of Sierra Bravo (sharing booth space with Zumasys) had some impressive collateral to profile his company’s extensive tools and services related to .NET and other technologies. Nathan Rector, of course, offers development services with .NET, with other specialties including PDAs, smartphones, and now RFID.
In addition to .NET connectivity, there was a definite trend in the vendor offerings toward DBMS platform compatibility, as well as connectivity to non-MV environments. Revelation has had an interface for a while now which allows BASIC code in an OpenInsight application to use U2 as a data source. ONCorp’s Denise Buttrey demonstrated how ONware allows similar integration with completely transparent use of Oracle and SQL Server from BASIC, TCL, and reports (LIST, SORT, etc). You can even write your code in some MV DBMS platforms and run it in ONware. D3 has OpenDB for similar access to remote relational environments, as well as the optimized Oracle Gateway. For connectivity from outside of the DBMS, as mentioned above, PDP.NET supports U2 plus D3, and mv.NET supports almost all of the MV DBMS platforms. Of course jBASE also provides integration with relational platforms through jEDI and other components. Northgate even advertises Reality as “both a MultiValue and an enhanced relational (SQL) database.” All database companies still want business from migration but we’ve seen what that sort of runaround has done to our market.The approach these days is toward selling products which offer integration rather than migration. It’s interesting and only semi-surprising that while some DBMS vendors want to make it easy to connect to other platforms, they’re not spending the same effort to allow other products to connect to them. Sure, with every DBMS we see .NET this and Java that, and nice diagrams showing the database in the middle with lots of connectivity options from outside. But the connection into every MV DBMS product is different and often proprietary, a real nightmare for tool developers who need to support multiple DBMS platforms and operating systems. The matter is further complicated when the most reliable connectivity methods are through for-fee, add-on components.In these cases,developers are faced with using free connectivity options that may be slow, buggy, or technically non-elegant, or they need to tell their customers to buy yet another piece of middleware in order to build the package.The dilemma is that DBMS vendors can’t allow end users to multiplex their licenses, but it’s difficult for tool developers to sell their products with N layers of licensing applied too. This situation is evident in one form or another with just about any product exhibited at Spectrum, and when a vendor says s/he doesn’t support a particular DBMS,this is probably the reason.For those of you who remember the SMA — it was and always has been a good idea.
Following the theme of connectivity, InterSystems made a big splash at this show by announcing development of MultiValue compatibility options with its Caché multidimensional, post-relational database. (Sound familiar?) Inter- Systems has been present at other Spectrum shows but the company has never presented a firm mission statement for this market. The message is clear now — InterSystems is going to make it easy and attractive for MV sites to migrate to Caché.As part of its MV initiative, the company recently hired Jim Idle (present at the show), formerly one of the chief architect/engineers for jBASE. In addition to an informative session to describe Caché in MV-specific terms, management held an evening presentation which was standing-room only, followed by a social gathering.Note from the crowd that there was definitely interest about what they were doing at “our” show. The MV DBMS vendors should start considering their strategy, as they will soon be faced with a highly successful competitor, a proven marketing machine that intends to migrate MV users and developers to a platform that is familiar and economical, and much more acceptable in the mainstream. Another theme at this show was Business Intelligence. MITS continues to be one of the hottest products in our market — a new BI dashboard was announced for MITS.Other products,whether reporting tools or business intelligence tools, continue to compare themselves to MITS in terms of functionality and cost. Informer from Entrinsik is an excellent reporting product for allowing users to create and/or run ad-hoc queries. Via Systems just announced MyViewpoint, a neat new BI tool written in Java. Stamina Software has Visage BIT in addition to its Visage Reporter product.And as a Certified Partner of Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services, Raining Data has a new entry in this area as well. This area can be confusing for end users: Do you need reporting tools or business intelligence tools like the ones mentioned above? What is a reasonable upfront cost and TCO for the feature set provided? Should you buy a reporting infrastructure or buy tools and write your own reports? I think the answer is first to identify your needs as specifically as possible, then approach each vendor to get a thorough understanding of the vendor’s value-add proposition — including, of course, their costs.
Of course, another major product category included application development tools.A number of enhancements have been made to DesignBais, keeping this high on my personal list of favorite development tools for the Web and now for devices.Since its initial offering at Spectrum last year, DesignBais has sold thousands of seats to large and small sites all over the world. Spectrum regular Stamina Software took a new approach to marketing the Viságe family of products, giving a little spotlight to a wider range of software tools. Most people seem focused on their core offering, the Web development environment, but it was good to try a different approach. The graphical development interface for OpenInsight is built into the software, no extra tools required. It was good to see how easy it is to build OI apps right out of the box — free CDs with OI for Windows and Linux were distributed. OHM Systems demonstrated their OHMWeb Environment,WADE, which produces an attractive and feature-rich Web UI. Via Systems was promoting WebWizard, and Eagle Rock Information Systems was promoting its version of WebWizard as well as a new reporting tool called DataReady.Yes, the wizards are confusing, but be sure to check out both offerings and make comparisons before making decisions.
This is very subjective, but here are my picks for companies and products that stood out at this show. Revelation now has OpenInsight for Linux.This is the first “pure MV” Linux desktop development and deployment solution.To my knowledge, Revelation is now the only MV exhibitor at Linux- World where there was great interest in this offering — kudos and thanks to Mike Ruane and his team for their technical and marketing efforts. OpenInsight for Windows also deserves a “hot pick” mention. The features and low cost make this platform outstanding for deployment of a GUI app to a large number of small end users. I spent some extra time in sessions to understand the OI option, and I now think it’s one of the under-appreciated gems in our market. EasyCo is a distributor of the QM MV DBMS from Ladybridge Systems, and contributes significantly to development of the software through the open source OpenQM project. Martin Phillips of Ladybridge came in from the U.K. to talk with people about the software. All commercial licenses of QM now include a free single user version of AccuTerm, and free CDs were distributed with a QM/AccuTerm evaluation package. If you want free MV development and very low-cost deployment on a Prime-flavor platform, then you should take a look at QM and OpenQM.
I spent some extra time with ONware for this show too, and I’m happy I did — that’s one of the reasons I like coming to Spectrum, to challenge old notions and learn something new. ONware is largely misunderstood in terms of features and affordability. If you want an affordable way to access relational data as though it’s hashed MV, take a look at ONware in addition to the other options available. On my Web site, profiles and commentary are available for all vendors — good information that simply couldn’t fit into this piece. Products and services include hardware, CRM software, Web-based shopping carts, backup services, migration services, imaging, financial payment software, printing solutions, and others.You will also find information on the corporate updates presented by DBMS vendors. I hope you’ve found this to be a fair and complete recap of the show, and I hope this inspires vendors and attendees for upcoming shows. My thanks to Gus,Monica,and the Spectrum team for making this all work. Tony Gravagno is president of Nebula Research and Development. In addition to providing NebulaMail, the SMTP/POP3 compliant interface for BASIC, and the NebulaPay financial payment processing interface, Nebula R&D specializes in .NET and many forms ofWeb-based development for MV VARs and end users. Read profiles of all Spectrum exhibitors at http://Nebula- RnD.com/Spectrum. © 2007 Nebula Research and Development |
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