RE: ok, I made a green screen with radio buttons -- MIDRANGE-L

I had no intention of  dissing the work you guys are doing, believe me. 
Its just that I have had my eyes opened regarding client/server.  Yes, 
there are some really great ways of handling problems, the applications 
look nice, the users love them, and user training is a fraction of green 
screen trianing costs. 

But client/server is not cheap, nor is it fast.  Just keeping everyone on 
the same version & level is a chore in itself.  Add to that the roll-out 
process and the problems all begin to add up in more staff and more 
hardware.

My only point was, and continues to be, that there are features we can 
offer to green-screen shops.  Many shops have terminals and will for the 
foreseeable future.  But they can have colors, a mouse, and a few 
appearance improvements.




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Subject:        RE: ok, I made a green screen with radio buttons

Three full-timers, a total of two person-years (how's THAT for politically
correct!?).
 
But believe-you-me, this is NOT a small or simple application.
 
HOWEVER, let me state emphatically that from a BUSINESS point-of-view, I 
can
see NO reason why this was developed for Windows versus 5250. Seriously.
 
Then again, I VERY SELDOM see good BUSINESS reasons for GUI's.
 
My constant comment/joke during the development of this application has
been, "Can I interest you in green screen RPG?".
 
My point, however, was that this type of thing is VERY "doable".
 
Plus, the UML tools and class builders ARE nice and DO make development go
VERY fast.
 
Peace,
 
-- Don 

-----Original Message-----
From: boothm@earth.goddard.edu [mailto:boothm@earth.goddard.edu]
Sent: Friday, November 05, 1999 8:21 AM
To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
Subject: RE: ok, I made a green screen with radio buttons



How big is the staff doing this Don?  Is there more than you and a 
part-time
helper involved? 

I'm asking in seriousness because what you've described (aside from the 
FDA
and CFR stuff) is work for a mid-level RPG programmer for what? maybe 6
months? 





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Subject:        RE: ok, I made a green screen with radio buttons 

Sir --

We are currently deploying a three-tier client/server application.

This application will support 150 users.

The database is SQL Server 7.0. We are using MTS. We are using VB 6.0.

This is a VERY critical line-of-business application. The software must 
meet
government (FDA) standards and is validated. We are implementing CFR Part 
11
Electronic Records/Electronic Signatures.

It's here. It's now. It's working.

HOW difficult is that? I don't get it. And my brother went to Goddard for 
a
year or two, so I KNOW you're smart.

-- Don

-----Original Message-----
From: boothm@earth.goddard.edu [mailto:boothm@earth.goddard.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 1999 8:05 PM
To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
Subject: Re: ok, I made a green screen with radio buttons



John, your points are valid and I accept them for that.  Getting excited
over radio buttons is difficult. 

On the other hand I've spent two years getting myself up to speed on the
client/server solution amd the full GUI pallet that you lay out as the 
goal,
and my reaction is... GUI ain't ready for prime time yet.  The 
client/server
paradigm is difficult to install, difficult to keep in synch, dreadfully
expensive to develop, more expensive to deploy, and not yet very
fault-tolerant.  I've yet to see really good GUI applications devoted to 
the
businesss model, beyond typical office secretarial services. 

Until GUI really is deployable then it looks to me like business will be
done on text-based screens.   Even the e-business web applications I've 
seen
are essentially text-based at this point. 






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Subject:        Re: ok, I made a green screen with radio buttons 

Booth, 

Maybe some of us are having trouble getting too excited because a few 
clunky
radio buttons on a 80 or 132 column screen does not a GUI make. I'd be 
hard
pressed to believe that (as currently implemented) they make an 
application
any easier to use, and they certainly don't give a tired old terminal a 
sexy
new look. These things are an answer to a problem that doesn't exist. My
users aren't asking for radio buttons and menu bars on a terminal screen.
What are they asking for? 

They are asking for a GUI - a complete GUI. One that provides the 
following
features: 

1) Colour - Lots of it, used intelligently to draw attention to different
information. 
2) More data for each screen. Eighty columns doesn't cut it. And just try 
to
effectively use 132 columns displays in a CA/400 emulation session - it
looks horrible. 
3) Rich text fields that allow them to emphasize their text. 

And on, and on, and on.... limited time prevents me from continuing. But
these few examples should serve to illustrate some of the elements of a 
GUI
that actually help the user in any significant way. Radio boxes, menu bars
etc., are nice touches, but they don't allow you to really do anything 
that
you can't already accomplish using existing techniques. 

Solving any of these problems would require significant resources, and I
don't think that I would like to see IBM wasting any more time on it. I
think that they should continue to focus on the more modern tools instead. 


Regards, 

John Taylor 





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