Hello,

Well I was just sitting here thinking about our 10 year old accounting/production system (all written in Arev/OI) and a thought hit me like a hammer, knocking me from my chair. What if revelation does not continue development on OI/Arev? Flat-filing and migrating to a SQl server would be too costly and time consuming (And maybe impossible considering the size of our application and the fact that our plant runs 24/7 365 days a year. What are the plans for an OI 32 bit version? I understand that Arev is no longer supported? What are Revelations plans for a non java based development tool

Thanks Bruce

What are Revelations plans for a non java based development tool…

Zilch.

dbakke@srpcs.com

SRP Computer Solutions

This is definately an issue.

Revelation did consider this option once upon a time and then decided on Java.

If the transfer from OI to Java can be made VERY simple, there may be a chance. If not, then things will get tricky.

I wonder if a consortium of major users could be made to get together to take over OI development within Revelation, to make it happen?

Bruce,

I have the same problem as you in fact my active application is 14 years old and running RevG.

There was a discussion relating to your question on the Works jRev discussion group in late Feburary. The question raised there was if there would be a migration path from the 16-bit OI platform to the 32-bit jRev. There was a lot of dancing around that question by Revelation and concluded with following message from Kurt Baker:

"Thanks for the question.

The Presidents letter of 1999 is accurate, it is our intention to provide migration tools and it is our planning objective to provide the fundamentals to you by the end of 2001.

Kurt"

For reference the President's letter of 1999 says:

"All active WORKS customers will receive the LiveWater releases described above. It is important to understand that Release 1.0 will provide support for relational databases and will include only Java as a scripting language. Revelation-required support for the Linear Hash database and the BASIC+ scripting language, as well as migration tools, will be delivered in subsequent releases. It is our desire to work closely with the active WORKS community to define, chart and execute on this set of functionality, and incorporate it into the quarterly release program. At this time, I do not have firm estimates of the time frames required to complete delivery of these elements, but it is our planning objective to have provided the fundamentals to you by the end of 2001."

I personally feel that the java approach taken by Revelation is the correct path both technically and "politcally". I use java and find it is a natural extension to both RevG and OI (I am sure Arev falls in there as well) "Politically" this decision puts Revelation back in the driver's seat with the product line and they are no longer modifying another company's work.

Now, in spite of my preference for jRev over OI, we have elected to migrate the RevG product to OI because it is more "mature", then move it to RevG later. The big two questions for us are: 1) The ease of migration from OI to jRev, and 2) Licensing and costs.

Actually LiveWater (or JRev) will be the 32-bit platform. The fact that it is Java does not mean that it can only run on the Internet. On the contrary, most people would use it first as a local area network application and then decide if they want to make the same screens available on an intranet or the Internet.

As far as a straight conversion goes, it probably won't be as simple as saying "here's my OI form and/or report; now make it Java" but at the same time it won't mean re-writing your entire code.

And that's my 2c…

Dave Pociu

Dave,

Although I totally agree with your comments and I am a jRev proponent, I am curious about one thing. Your remarks sound as if you have some advanced insight into the OI to jRev conversion.

Do you? And if so, tell me more.

My insight comes from the fact that in the past year ( and especially in the past 3 months) I have been doing A LOT of Java development.

If you look in the JRev section, you'll find that 90% of the questions come from me ;) I have looked ( and like a lot) at what LiveWater does.

Based on what I have seen I tried to see what I can do to be able to link my OI apps to Java as soon as possible because that's where the market is.

I also have some possible early solutions for the above, but more on that in the near future.

Regards,

Dave Pociu

Impressive Dave! You are giving me a warm-fuzzy about this. There is nothing like a pioneer to blaze the path for the rest of us.

I am moderately proficient in java but I have not yet dove into jRev or even look at their various packages, classes and methods due to my work load. I hope to do so in about a month. Then I will be joining you in the active jRev discussion group.

Thanks for the vote of confidence ;) I'll try not to disappoint…

Look forward to seeing you in the JRev forum soon.

Dave

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