Re: Just one more anecdote

"Mark D Powell" <Mark.Powell@xxxxxxx> wrote
> Considering the product was another entry in the crowed CRM marketplace
> which has never recovered from its post 2000 collapse I think this
> product failure is more an economic decision than anything. It was
> just going to take too much money to position the product in the
> marketplace when all was said and done.

IMO all such failures have an economic basis...this one sounds like it was
going to "take too much money" to "keep" it in the marketplace.

> Legacy designs can be ported to rdbms products. Just look at SAP. It
> was based on ISAM files. It isn't the most advanced design in its
> marketplace but it hold a huge marketshare advantage over its
> competition.

Good point. I think this further underpins the benefits of the RM and
particularly its constraint mantra.

>From my undergrad memory an ISAM system has no mandated constraining but any
ISAM app certainly wouldn't live long enough to become a premier legacy
system if the R2 developers did not comply with the implicit data design.
Of course ABAP helped pull this off in a big way!

Conversely I am much more sanguine about "soft" environments like (as I
understand it to be) Pick (et al including xDb fr'instance) - not because a
working solution can't be developed but more so because they allow poor
practices to prevail for long enough to seduce management that the expected
outcome is certain, then only to find in the long term that unforeseen or
unexpressed requirements are almost always undeliverable economically let
alone projected at the original run rate. For some reason Management finds
this cold turkey experience particularly distasteful ;-)

Cheers, Frank.


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