After the subject video conference, John Painter said:

>The second point was that the MB Foster collaboration
>for a 32 bit ODBC driver will not be available till August or so.

As expected, Birket followed up with:

>John -
>Our DataExpress product is shipping, including the 32 bit and 16 bit
>drivers and lots of Value added stuff - KSAM,MPE,Powerhouse Dictionary
>access, the ability to do Remote Procedure calls ...

.. BTW, I really do not mean to imply that there is anything
wrong with that once in awhile.  From everything I hear M.B.
Foster provides and supports a quality product..

However.........

IMHO HP was already lagging the industry by not having a
32-bit ODBC driver for Image/SQL by IPROF 1996.  As late
as HP World - Anaheim the best guess on ODBC Link/SE
from HP was I believe by first quarter of CY 1997 (confess
I don't have time to dig up all my records right now).

If August 1997 is actually what we are now looking at for
delivery of 32-bit ODBC from HP, I would respectfully ask
and suggest that HP and/or M.B. Foster should at least
post some information to 3000-L as to why there is another
significant delay in the delivery of ODBC Link/SE, and give
the user base some indication of how "solid" we can expect
the "August or so" projection to be.

I believe M.B. Foster has been shipping their full in-house
ODBC Link product with the most if not all of the goodies
Birket describes above since February of 1996.  I think it is
a fair question for users to wonder why it takes 18 months
to separate out just the 32-bit ODBC part of that.....

Ken Sletten
SIGIMAGE Chair