[AccessD] Future of Access?

<who is  going to be able to maintain his software if it
<is not converted every few years to a technology that people are able
and willing to work with?>

My son just graduated from college with a business degree in MIS. He has had
the GOOD fortune to land a great job with a major insurance company. The
catch? He has been assigned to the mainframe maintenance team. He is
attempting to learn COBOL, JCL and easytrieve (?) to service apps that might
have been cutting edge 30 yrs ago. For someone whose total experience is
with object oriented programming (he is a pretty good web designer) he is
going nuts! Even the manuals are out of print <g>.
Jim Hale

-----Original Message-----
From: Wortz, Charles [mailto:CWortz at tea.state.tx.us]
Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2003 8:52 AM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: RE: [AccessD] Future of Access?


Arthur,

But in 30 years will the kids know how to use pencils? <grin>

That is one of the reasons I told Chris to expect some conversions of
his software.  Unless he is planning on staying on the project for the
next 30 years, who is  going to be able to maintain his software if it
is not converted every few years to a technology that people are able
and willing to work with?

The software does not wear out, but finding people that understand old
software and are willing to maintain it is very expensive.  The dBase
applications I wrote 10-15 years ago probably still would work fine, but
how are you going to find anybody that understands the dBase file
structure and is willing to work with it?  They would have to double my
salary if they wanted me to stick with dBase.  Thus, they all have been
converted to Access since that is a technology that has an large labor
pool of developers and maintainers.

Charles Wortz
Software Development Division
Texas Education Agency
1701 N. Congress Ave
Austin, TX 78701-1494
512-463-9493
CWortz at tea.state.tx.us



-----Original Message-----
From: Arthur Fuller [mailto:artful at rogers.com] 
Sent: Wednesday 2003 Jul 16 08:16
To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving'
Subject: RE: [AccessD] Future of Access?

The only technology guaranteed to be here in 2033, AFAIK, is a pencil
and paper :-) However, the remote users might not like the time-lag.

Arthur

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Foote, Chris
Sent: July 16, 2003 5:57 AM
To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving'
Subject: RE: [AccessD] Future of Access?


Thanks for the input Gustav!

I'd forgotten about Oracle! I'll add that to the list of possibilities.

The requirements are (at this stage) pretty vague, but is likely to
involve up to ten concurrent users on geographically remote sites. I'm
guessing on half a million records split between five/six main tables.
My current A97 db with 16k records weighs in at (FE + BE) 15MB. My
proposed db is not much more complicated than this.

Thirty years ago my programming was done on a Ferranti Pegasus
mainframe. I had to write the programme one paper with a pencil, convert
it to hole on punched cards, wait for the technician to run the
programme and give me the paper read-out. The Pegasus (IIRC) used 60
thousand ECC83 valves (tubes) and had a whole building to itself. Thirty
years on, I've got more processing power in my cell phone!

But my company /still/ wants me to design a database to be used for the
/next/ thirty years!

Best Regards!
Chris Foote (UK)
_______________________________________________
AccessD mailing list
AccessD at databaseadvisors.com
http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd
Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://databaseadvisors.com/pipermail/accessd/attachments/20030716/5d87aaed/attachment-0001.html>