Re: Silver Bullet Follow Up

HankHeath@aol.com wrote:
> 
> I realize you may be tired of hearing about this, but I feel it necessary to
> complete the report.
> 
> Today, Dan Harrow and his partner invited some companies in to see a demo of
> this product - "The Millennium Silver Bullet for the AS/400" or MSB/400. I'll
> summarize the results from my notes. Disclaimer: I may have misunderstood
> parts of the demonstration. Anything I misunderstood I will publicly
> acknowledge:
> 
> - The product converts dates within a physical file on an AS/400, and
> rebuilds all of the logicals (indices) over them. I don't have a list of the
> date fields offered, but I do recall him showing two, four, and six digit
> dates. Dan mentioned that he handles ISO, L-date, packed, and customer
> defined formats, among others.
> 
> - The product produces a report of the files changed, and the logicals
> rebuilt.
> - There are plans of building a report which will list the lines of code
> effected by the file changes, so the programmer can go in and manually change
> the code.
> - There are plans to build a version for non-US date standards.
> - For beyond 2000, the Ammo box will provide tools for file conversion that
> can be used for such tasks as Euro-money conversion.
> 
> - There is a limit of 35 fields available for date fields. Each of these has
> to be hand entered, telling the program where they reside. There is no
> interface to any impact analysis tool.
> - The program is totally dependent upon field reference files. If you do not
> have field reference files, you cannot use the program.
> - The program will not handle S/36 files nor the S/36 environment.
> - The program will not make any program changes.
> - The program will only run on OS/400 V3R2 or above. There is no backward
> compatibility.
> - Source is not available to value-added resellers. Any improvements must be
> completed by Info-Tech.
> 
> - The claim to change 100% of dates was mollified. The current claim is that
> the product handles 100% of the dates tested. They do not guarantee to
> convert 100% of the dates in the field.
> - The claim to not need an impact analysis was explained. They regard an
> impact analysis as a report of how much code will have to be modified to
> become Y2K compliant. They are not aware of having to deal with a business
> impact analysis.
> - One of the attendees suggested that a better name would be the Silver
> Shovel. He quickly tried to put a positive spin on the comment, though.
> - Windowing is ignored by the product. The long term plans for the product
> include being used by those people after 1/1/2000. They apparently will need
> the product to save them from the problems involved in windowing.
> Encapsulation wasn't mentioned.
> 
> Because of restrictions on the lists, I cannot post the price and
> availability. However, you can e-mail me directly to get that information.
> 
> Hope this was useful.
> 
> Hank Heath
> * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
> * This is the Midrange System Mailing List!  To submit a new message,   *
> * send your mail to "MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com".  To unsubscribe from     *
> * this list send email to MAJORDOMO@midrange.com and specify            *
> * 'unsubscribe MIDRANGE-L' in the body of your message.  Questions      *
> * should be directed to the list owner / operator: david@midrange.com   *
> * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
> umidr
Hank, I would be very interested in additional info including price,
etc.  We have been evaluating Century Soluctions by Edge Technology, and
they are still pretty buggy.  The keep having to give us a new tape to
test on (demo), as we keep discovering bugs.  Any info would be very
much appreciated.

Jim Waymire
Crowell, Weedon & Co.
Los Angeles, Ca

Fax 213-629-0772
Phone 213-244-9318
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* This is the Midrange System Mailing List!  To submit a new message,   *
* send your mail to "MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com".  To unsubscribe from     *
* this list send email to MAJORDOMO@midrange.com and specify            *
* 'unsubscribe MIDRANGE-L' in the body of your message.  Questions      *
* should be directed to the list owner / operator: david@midrange.com   *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *