Re: Raining Data's Dream World

The product isn't the problem.  All products have bugs which we can
nitpick forever.  The problem is the lack of forward-thinking
management at the company.  And as always to be fair - the comments we
see in this group are from a small and vocal minority.  We see the
same comments from the same people all the time and it sounds like
there is some major ****ft going on.  There isn't.  D3 is basically a
great platform, there are a lot of people who use it and love it (me
included) and they have no reason to migrate.  I criticize RD for lack
of foresight and initiative toward growth, and occasionally for
letting some issues go unfixed for way too long.  But the majority of
their users are happy, their VARs are still selling systems that are
running fine, and I don't believe their pricing has changed in a long
time.

With reference to my last note, I could come 180 degrees on this issue
of fees for developer licenses: For the $500/year you get every tool
available for a given platform, 10 licenses, and full sup****t.  If a
developer has software like this for a whole year and doesn't recover
his investment then he's doing something wrong - and the vendor
shouldn't have to incur the full burden for that folly.  Also, any
clueless nobody can get a copy of D3 for the same price and get full
sup****t.  Heck I can easily burn through that $500 worth of time in
one sup****t call on a couple products that I sup****t, and I'm changing
my sup****t model because of that.  RD is offering to sit through a
year of it for anyone.  We're all getting huffy on principals and the
indignance of having to pay for something that we don't elsewhere.
Again, I'm in this crowd too, and while I agree that this is just
another example of clueless RD management and another tiny nail in the
coffin, I also believe in the big picture this (and many other things
people rag about here) is really one of the trivial ones.

CDP is the noise capital of the MV market, and not really
representative of the market as a whole.  It's only one view into the
market but proper analysis needs to consider many other views as well.

Since we're here, I'd agree that InterSystems is probably the best MV
DBMS company to do business with for various reasons.

Trying to maintain some sense of balance...

Tony Gravagno
Nebula Research and Development
TG@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 remove.pleaseNebula-RnD.com
Nebula R&D sells mv.NET and DesignBais worldwide,
and provides related development and training services


dawn wrote:

>Not to sound like an advertisement, I will say that this is one area
>where the Cache' folks really have it together.  They know that both
>providing you with the software and with excellent services (pitching
>in with conversions in a big way, for example) is an investment for
>them.  Such investments are built into the way they do business.
>
>It sounds like the owners of D3 treat it as something they must
>squeeze every penny from now, rather than seeing any investment in the
>future.  I would be curious to know how many D3 customers are out
>there that are not looking to migrate to another platform.  Policies
>such as this seem to encourage developers to find better solutions.
>
>If I put my "industry analyst' hat on, I would have to conclude that
>D3 is almost a dead product and certainly a dead-end product.  I could
>be wrong, however.
>
>cheers!  --dawn
>