Re: Additional reports

Dennis,

In a message dated 99-01-28 17:02:03 EST, you write:

<<snip>>
> What I am wondering is what other BPCS support staff is doing for the
>  reports that their users have requested.  Do you have a 3rd party product
>  that lets the users do their own thing.  Letting the users do their own
>  thing sure helps an understaffed IS team but that will probably cause me
>  more work and headaches and wasted system resources in the long run.
<<snip>>

I'm not quite sure what the point of this question is ;-).  If query is
inadequate, and you can't spend any more money, what good is any further
advice?  I'm sure that SSA, _IF_ they come up with a replacement for Loser
Vision, will charge dearly for copies of that solution because they'll
probably purchase it from a third party like they did the last time.  I'm
assuming that you're running on an AS/400.  Since Jim Sloan left IBM and took
TAATOOLS with him, can you name a single _useful_ product other than the
Security/JAVA Toolkits for the AS/400 that comes for free?

My current primary client uses the FOCUS EIS against BPCS, but it's pricey and
the GUI version has yet to prove useful even though it's been available for
nearly three years.  ShowCase/Vista and its associated Pilot Lightship product
was good years ago, although I haven't heard anything about them lately -- it
was also even pricier than FOCUS.  If freeing up your development staff is the
goal, you also have to be blessed with some "Power Users", while still giving
up time to train those users on the database, in order to see _ANY_ benefit
from an EIS tool.

To be frank, I think that EIS tools have cost development staffs almost as
much time as it has saved them.  Ever spent three or more hours in a meeting
that was generated by erroneous EIS data?  I've seen it more times than I can
count.  Some "flunkey" runs a report against a logical file that has all
records with supporting data from files that have active records only -- next
thing you know, you're trying to explain to the plant manager and his support
staff (without a terminal or PC connection available) that your software is
_NOT_ responsible for the aberrant results.  Yes, the users have found some
bugs in V6 for us, but they have wasted our time for the most part.

For free, I can only think of the following options off the top of my head:

1.  Query --  already proven unacceptable, but maybe you could teach the users
to utilize intermediate files?
2.  PC File Transfer -- download data to a PC either from a file or using
CPYSPLF and use already purchased spreadsheet software to parse and present
the data.
3.  Teach your users to program -- not viable in most cases, but I once worked
myself out of a job because all of my best customers took my course and
happened to have people on staff that had a talent for programming.

Good luck, you're going to need it!

Cheers,

Dean Asmussen
Enterprise Systems Consulting, Inc.
Fuquay-Varina, NC  USA
E-Mail:  DAsmussen@aol.com

"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they're _NOT_ out to get you."
-- Anonymous
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