Conference ulysse::rdb_vms_competition

241.0. "ACMS/RDB versus Supra Help Needed" by BELFST::COYLE (SWAS Specialist -- Belfast, N.Ireland) Mon Nov 07 1988 22:41

Hi all,

	This is a mail message I've sent to some people who have in the 
past commented on SUPRA from Cincom. If anyone else can reply/help it 
would be much appreciated.

	I've posted it in the RDB,RDB_VMS_COMPETITION,OLTP_INFORMATION 
and VMS_OLTPSERVICES.

	I'm currently part of a team working on selling ACMS/Rdb into a 
large account here in Belfast. 

	Up until recently it looked extremely good for these products 
with DBMS for any MRP work that was in the pipeline.

	Suddenly their evaluation of MRP systems has raised CINCOM to 
the top of the preferred suppliers in this area and they being good 
marketing people have offered Supra as the tool for all the other work. 
They even made a presentation to the customer in which they put 
Oracle,Ingres and Rdb in the same league an said that Supra was much 
superior.

	I've noticed your name with comments in notesfiles on SUPRA.

I need concrete facts on some issues a.s.a.p. as the customer will make 
decisions in the next few days. The points I mention below are from 
notes you may have entered in the past in notesfiles. If it's you 
comment or if you can add meat to anyone else's comments it would be 
much appreciated. 

-------------- Some Previous Notesfile Comments ------------------------

1.
  	The products also have major performance problems, and are
riddled with inconsistencies and a few bugs. Q? Need Examples Please?

2.
 	If the customer is at all interested in workstations, it is
doubtful that Cincom will support DECwindows even in the medium
to long range.  Q? Cincom say next year?

3.
 	It is doubtful that Cincom will add support for parallel
processing to ULTRA. Q? symmetric processing?? 

4.
 	Converting Ultra and maintaining compatibility with existing
customers would be extremely time consuming and expensive. I would
encourage anyone to look deep under the covers at a 'Supra' release
for VMS. The best that they will be able to do is to maintain
application level transparency between IBM and VAX via Mantis. 
Q? Any more info availabel?
        
5.
 	Also he was of the opinion that Supra is no more than Ultra +
LUVs (Logical User Views) + Spectra (query language).  Can anyone
verify this? 
    

------------------------ End of Comments -----------------------------

Regards and thanks for any help in advance

Kevin	
    

                   <Hope this is not too late>
    
    1. Ultra Bugs -
    
    	: Suggest you try out different queries under SPECTRA with SORT
    orders and Totals, Counts etc. Due to the internal design, this
    area is riddled with problems.
    
    	: Is supposed to support RMS as a User View (LUV). If you try
    RMS Indexed files with alternate keys, there are lots of potential
    problems - like a sweep of the entire file instead of using the
    Keys.
    
    2. MANTIS -
    
    	: For most internal numerical variables, it uses Double Precision
    Floating Point. (D_FLOAT I believe) This leads to a number of
    inconsistencies when printing (CONVERSEing a screen) and using it
    internally in a MANTIS program.
    
    3. SUPRA/ULTRA -
    
    	If IBM coexistence is an issue, they do not have a convenient
    supported way of migrating the metadata from IBM to VAX or vice
    versa (last I knew - about 7 months back). Even migrating a database
    is likely to be a messy affair.
    
    4. General
    
    	One of the biggest drawbacks of these products is that they
    are not integrated well. Every product has its own look and feel.
    From you go from one product to another, the entire keyboard layout
    and keyboard conventions change. For instance MANTIS keyboard usage
    and ULTRA keypad usage are so different it is too obvious they had
    been developed by two different groups who did not talk to each
    other.
    
    Srinivasan
    (who_worked_for_Cincom_and_supported_the_products_for_a_short_time)