After my invitation to third-party ODBC providers to
respond, Joe was good enough to do so:

> QueryCalc has no upgrade fees, and I believe is priced on a
> single tier (one price covers all machines) -- Wirt can correct
> me if I'm wrong.

Wirt is obviously the final authority, but unless he just recently
changed his policy QueryCalc does employ tiered pricing....
which especially given that it is a report writer seems fair and
reasonable to me....

> ODBCLink/SE is a direct replacement to PCAPI, with the
> addition of 32-bit.  It was never advertised to be anything different,

True.

>> ..... LINKWAY from CSI Business Solutions (in the USA;
>> Computing Solutions Limited in the UK)

> (correction: Available from CSILLC in the "Americas" and
> CSL elsewhere)

My mistake.... sorry... thank you for correcting my error...

> .... price is not the entire picture, correct?

Absolutely correct.

>> LINKWAY uses ALLBASE, as does the bundled ODBCLink/SE.

> Pardon my blasphemy (for some people) -- but personally, this
> argument is getting really lame.  The simple fact is that HP
> designed Image/SQL in the way it did, to reuse much of what it
> did for Allbase, and it works.

For the record, and speaking with my end-user hat on and
not as SIGIMAGE Chair, I have perhaps somewhat slowly
but over time in large part come over to Joe's camp.  Right
now to get ODBC access to TurboIMAGE the SQL metadata
required by ODBC has to be stored and managed *somewhere*
external to IMAGE.  If not in ALLBASE tables, then in an analog
of some kind.   The core functionality provided by the ATTACH
to an ALLBASE DBE in IMAGESQL is in many ways powerful
magic;  it's just a few.....  O.K.: several....  management and
usability issues that need to be addressed with the ISQL,
SQLUTIL, IMAGESQL, and DBUTIL suite....

> I won't say that there aren't problems -- there are.  I am saying
> that the "Direct To Image" argument is NOT one of them.  Direct
> to Image is more of an excuse than anything else.  (now getting
> flame suit ready :)

I basically now agree....  and join you in reaching for a
heavy-duty Nomex flame suit...   ;-)

> Anyone who relies on Microsoft Wizards for an application
> (such as a Web app from MS Access) will need to hand-turn
> the ASP code. .....   Anyone who works with HTML, CFML,
> ASP, DHTML, and all the other alphabet soup, using WYSIWYG
> tools, will end up hand-turning their code.

Yes, we are more and more coming to realize that....  which
still is a bit of a  :-(  , even if a fact of life...

Ken Sletten
NUWC-KPT