RE: Document Imaging Systems -- MIDRANGE-L

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We use ImageView and its internet version and save images to optical disks.
Works pretty good. Index is stored on the AS400.

-----Original Message-----
From: Brad Jensen [mailto:brad@elstore.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2002 10:09 AM
To: midrange-l@midrange.com
Subject: Re: Document Imaging Systems


> ~~~Users of said systems are encouraged to reply to list or
>
> Bill,
>
> http://www.realvisionsoftware.com has my vote.
>
> useable Documentation.
> excellent support.
> Good indexing system.
> built for heavy duty use.
> Security choices.
> We have set up the internet viewer and it works like a champ.
>
>
> Mark Villa in Charleston SC


I am not a user, I am a vendor, here is my two cents

I think for report and image archiving, you may want to have the
server be a PC, unless you are going to dedicate an AS/400 to it.
(Not everyone agrees with this, especially if you plan for your
application to start small and stay small).

The reason is both storage cost and eventual conversion cost. You
can store about a terabyte of AS/400 reports (one hundred fifty
million pages, or 15 million dollars of avoided cost) on a PC hard
drive for $300 - and mirror it for another $300. You can easily
copy that off on CD for 29 cents per CD, or DVD-R (which is still
about $8 a DVD-R disk, but that will come down.) And the drives
that are coming will be cheaper and faster and bigger.

As your storage grows day by day, backing it up to tape becomes
more and more of a chore.

And then five or ten years from now, when you have to convert the
data to whatever new format is needed, you don't have one save set
to convert, you have thousands of days. You will already be busy
with your most mission-critical conversion. Do you need the extra
work?

Meanwhile on a PC you can read a file that was made in 1982.

As long as your PC-based report server will let you access the
reports through green screens (without reuploading them to the
AS/400) it makes sense to do the job on the PC. You also have the
advantage that the PC is available when the AS/400 may not be (and
I don't mean to suggest hardware failure on the AS/400.) PC hard
drives are very reliable now (actually it was IBM that had the
most recent recall on hard drives.)

That being said, there are people who are very happy with AS/400
based document imaging systems.

Brad Jensen
www.elstore.com LaserVault - see the demo at
www.elstore.com/lvuc.htm





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