I seem to recall, from "The Legacy Continues", that a number of vendors were
offering 32-bit platforms. The migration path for customers on their 16-bit
platform was to buy the new box, learn to use the new OS, rewrite batch jobs
and command files for the new OS, figure out how the new data facility
worked, recompile / port everything quasi-portable, rewrite what was not,
and see what their third-party vendors were doing to support the new 32-bit
box. HP picked up a lot of 3000 sales during this time, since customers of
certain other vendors were bitter, and saw no reason to stay with a vendor
that had abandoned them. HP took its time producing a 32-bit box, and were
late to market with it.

            SET LAST-STATE TO OBVIOUS-FLAG
            SET OBVIOUS-FLAG TO TRUE
But it had the then novel idea of preserving forward / backward
compatibility, allowing the 32-bit systems to run 16-bit code. So I was not
surprised when hp was taking the lead with a 64-bit system that could run
32-bit Oracle 8 "as is".
            SET OBVIOUS-FLAG TO LAST-STATE

If Mike Yawn or George Stacknik see this, perhaps they can fill in the
details and correct any errors or omissions (my nearly forty-year old memory
has taken to throwing a number of parity errors).

This story stuck with me, because I worked for a company that had the same
experience, before I joined them. Their old platform could not process 24
hours worth of business in 24 hours, and they were watching the run time to
catch up on the weekends grow toward the available window. When their
platform vendor would not assure them that any migration path would not
similarly "dead end", they left that vendor. I got to see the results of the
migration, and it was remarkably ugly.

Fortunately, there is hope that we will be able to move to another platform,
emulating MPE. But it does seem to severely limit the viability of MPE as a
long-term career choice, and certainly has called into question its
viability as a business platform. For now, we are left with accelerated
erosion instead of growth, and may be thought of much as those who still
maintain and use their Amigas, Commodores, and TRS-80s.

Greg Stigers
http://www.cgiusa.com

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