RE: MIS Departmental improvements

You may also want to look at the Symtrax product StarQuery



On Thu, 7 Oct 2004, Bryon Cook wrote:

> Robot is made by Help Systems:
> http://www.helpsystems.com/products/index.html
>
> We use the Robot/Schedule product; I am not sure what product you would use
> to create user queries.  May be it is a different company?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Dwayne Allison
> Sent: Wednesday, October 06, 2004 10:26 PM
> To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
> Subject: RE: MIS Departmental improvements
>
> I work with a company us a software called ROBOT and it allow each user to
> create their own queries.  This was a pretty good user.  I will contact them
> to get the vendor.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Mike Eovino
> Sent: Wednesday, October 06, 2004 6:46 PM
> To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
> Subject: Re: MIS Departmental improvements
>
>
> On Wed, 6 Oct 2004 15:43:02 -0500, rob@xxxxxxxxx <rob@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > I am not in the camp that all reporting must be strictly controlled by the
> > MIS department and that all queries, etc must be generated by them.
> > Normally what happens in a shop like this is that a second system is built
> > up and a bunch of data gets duplicated and the users look more and more at
> > the iSeries, and the IS department, as being inflexible.
>
> All you need is a 5250 client that does file transfers and you're
> looking at a nightmare of Excel spreadsheets and Access databases.
> And just wait until they hire some MS Office jockey and start writing
> "mission critical" Access databases.  Think it can't happen?  That's
> how I got into our IT department.  I was too dangerous on the outside.
>  God help you when you have key parts of your business running on MS
> Access.
>
> > We have our users use queries.  And they can modify them also.  We've had
> > users upload PC data to the iSeries because they found Query/400 a great
> > tool.  And they used that for their reporting.
>
> How about that.  The iSeries is a better reporting tool than some PC
> stuff.  Rob, you oughta do commercials.
>
> I led the push for ASC's SEQUEL query and report tool around here, and
> we're piloting it with end users right now (programmers have had it
> for about a year and the ones that use it are hooked).  The users love
> it, provided we can tell them where the data lives and that the
> indexes over the files are halfway decent.  You will need to create
> new ones.
>
> Be prepared to spend some time with your end users if you want them
> using tools like this.  Also be prepared to create snapshot datasets
> for them.  If your database is like ours, you don't want users joining
> five files to get the answer they want.  Make it easy.  It's worth the
> time and the DASD.
>
> Pretty soon, they'll have their own little data mart, and they'll feel
> special.  If they need new data, add it and add it fast.  This can
> only make you look good.  When users start taking their reports to
> their bosses (hopefully Director/VP level personnel) and tell them how
> great it is, IT's value will skyrocket in their eyes.  Instead of
> being an obstacle to getting the users what they need, you are the
> provider of the solution.  And the best part is, the users are doing
> most of the work for themselves.
>
> Some of my bosses were hesitant to release SEQUEL to the user
> population.  I convinced them that the alternatives (more Access
> databases -- or worse, a data mart running on Oracle) were far worse
> than the work involved with rolling out SEQUEL.
>
> Mike E.
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