Gentle Listers,
I was going to ask that no more responses be sent in, because I thought,
mistakenly, that the trend had set in and nothing further was going to come
of the survey. I was navigating under a misapprehension, more results have
come in, indicating that whilst problems do exist with the current state of
the product, IMAGE/SQL is being used in C/S mode by a sizeable number of
sites.
Let us recap the questions, note they only deal with PRODUCTION databases:
1- Have you attached IMAGE/SQL databases and are you using the SQL
interface?
2- Are you accessing IMAGE/SQL in a client/server environment?
3- If No to 1, why not?
4- If Yes to 1 and No to 2, why not?
The 30 responses,
1- Not yet.
2- Not yet.
3- Limited use
4- Limited read-only
5- Not yet.
6- Attached bases, limited c/s, plans for more. Plan to use MS Access.
7- Not yet
8- Attached bases. Using ODBC unhappy with the response time.
9- Some access from another platform.
10- Attached several DBs. Using InfoAccess, MS Query, Excel, Word, more
coming.
11- Limited end-user reporting. Plans for future c/s development.
12- Yes, VB and ODBC usage
13- Yes, using VB and Excel to extract data from IMAGE/SQL.
14- Not yet.
15- Not yet, testing
16- Not yet.
17- Not yet, testing.
18- Not yet .
19- Attached bases, read-only, Using MS-Access.
20- Attached one small base (pilot), using MS suite, performance issues.
21- Not yet, have plans
22- Now using, MSAccess
23- Now using, MSAccess and Excel
24- Now actively demoing
25- Testing and starting to implement, using MSAccess and Excel
26- Now using, MSAccess
27- Now using, Foxpro
28- Tried it, had problems, going to SQL. Needs 32 bit ODBC because all
95/NT.
29- Now using, MSAccess and Excel, VB coming.
30 Now using, GUPTA SQLBase.
Only 33%, 10 said they were not using it in production at this time, or were
just playing with it or testing it.
66% or 20 have production databases which are attached.
13% or 36% are using a client/server methodology in one form or another to
access the data.
The recurring themes for those that are not using it are:
Lack of time/resources
Lack of information
The recurring themes for those now using or planning to use:
Concern with support for management of attached environment.
Concern with performance or reliability.
Concern with MS Access support.
Concern with 32 bit ODBC support
In a subsequent post I made some observations, which I now update.
1- Of close to 400 questionnaires sent out, 30 or 8% responded.
This is a very iffy statement. The original question went to 384 list
subscribers. It is impossible for me to determine who is an HP employee and
how many companies are represented. There seem to be many subscribers who
use personal logins to the list and many companies are represented more than
once, while large corporations with a multitude of databases only have one
subscription. I would guess the target population to be about 200 sites.
Perhaps Jeff could help me with this. None of the respondents, by the way,
were duplicates. The answers all represented different sites and none where
vendor sites, that I know of.
Whilst I have received messages from folks whom I have never seen post to the
list, I am sure that other users of the technology have not responded for one
reason or another. I can only draw conclusions on the answers I have
received, to do otherwise would be wild (and inaccurate) guessing and would
fly in the face of established sampling & statistics rules. But then again,
I like to fly in the face of established dogma :-).
So I will repeat the numbers stated above:
Only 10 of the respondent, 33% said they were not using it in production at
this time, or were
just playing with it or testing it.
20 of the respondents or 66% have production databases which are attached.
(This would represent 10% of the population if the figure of 200 above is
valid.)
13 respondents or 43% are using a client/server methodology in one form or
another to access the data. (This would represent 7% of the population, again
if the figure of 200 is valid.)
I will update these figures as more responses come in.
Kind regards,
Denys. . .
http://www.hicomp.com/hicomp
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