Ok, I have to admit it. I really enjoy this topic because it
presumably begins as an earnest technical discourse and quickly
devolves into a kind of "my father can beat up your father" political
exercise. Truth is, both the SQL Server and Progress persistence
engines are fairly ordinary derivatives of the page based relational
model invented by Oracle. They both implement the same ACID
transaction persistence principles, albeit in slightly different ways,
and aside from some minor implementation differences no one has yet to
conclusively demonstrate a capability present in one that is
absolutely precluded in the other. That being said it is academically
true that you cannot execute Transact SQL syntax in Progress and SQL
Server only runs on a single OS. These are rather inconsequential
differences, however, considering the market realities of the ERP
application that serves as the context of this discussion.
There remain two unrefuted truisms from the discussion thus far. As
Jason accurately pointed out, Vantage requires an additional
communication layer through the Progress schema handlers in order to
communicate with SQL Server and, universally agreed upon by all, SQL
Server has a larger talent pool who are familiar with the product. So
the big "To SQL or not to SQL" $64 questions becomes "Are you better
off selecting the persistence engine that is technically better suited
to the application but has a much smaller support talent pool from
which to draw or to select the persistence engine less suited to the
application that has a much larger support talent pool from which to
draw"?
From the discussion thread so far, the distinction seems to be that
those who have a penchant for "backdoor" customizations tend to prefer
SQL Server....
Regards,
Michael
Michael Barry
Aspacia Systems Inc
866.566.9600
312.803.0730 fax
http://www.aspacia.com/
presumably begins as an earnest technical discourse and quickly
devolves into a kind of "my father can beat up your father" political
exercise. Truth is, both the SQL Server and Progress persistence
engines are fairly ordinary derivatives of the page based relational
model invented by Oracle. They both implement the same ACID
transaction persistence principles, albeit in slightly different ways,
and aside from some minor implementation differences no one has yet to
conclusively demonstrate a capability present in one that is
absolutely precluded in the other. That being said it is academically
true that you cannot execute Transact SQL syntax in Progress and SQL
Server only runs on a single OS. These are rather inconsequential
differences, however, considering the market realities of the ERP
application that serves as the context of this discussion.
There remain two unrefuted truisms from the discussion thus far. As
Jason accurately pointed out, Vantage requires an additional
communication layer through the Progress schema handlers in order to
communicate with SQL Server and, universally agreed upon by all, SQL
Server has a larger talent pool who are familiar with the product. So
the big "To SQL or not to SQL" $64 questions becomes "Are you better
off selecting the persistence engine that is technically better suited
to the application but has a much smaller support talent pool from
which to draw or to select the persistence engine less suited to the
application that has a much larger support talent pool from which to
draw"?
From the discussion thread so far, the distinction seems to be that
those who have a penchant for "backdoor" customizations tend to prefer
SQL Server....
Regards,
Michael
Michael Barry
Aspacia Systems Inc
866.566.9600
312.803.0730 fax
http://www.aspacia.com/
On Mar 27, 2009, at 10:50 AM, Karl Dash wrote:
> Ron,
> Sorry to rain on your parade but are you concerned with who comes
> after you to keep the system running? No one is indispensable. All
> the whiz-bang things you can do in SQL need to be carefully
> documented and management needs to understand that your replacement
> will need to be someone with at least your skills level to keep the
> ship afloat.
> -Karl
>
> --- On Fri, 3/27/09, Ron B <obersenf@...> wrote:
>
> From: Ron B <obersenf@...>
> Subject: [Vantage] Re: To SQL or not to SQL
> To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Friday, March 27, 2009, 9:39 AM
>
> I also agree with the statement Robert makes. I have been a SQL
> Server user since 6.5 and was thankful that Epicor had this option.
> We seriously considered just going with Progress for speed, but SQL
> won in the end after having some frank discussions with Epicor.
>
> We have been live for about a year and already are moving items away
> from the Vantage UI such as reporting and using triggers instead of
> BPM's. I can browse data easily, utilize SQL Server Agent and have a
> great comfort level with my server. I haven't started on views or
> SP's yet, but will soon.
>
> So what I've sacrificed in speed I've gained in freedom. This has a
> payback to users as well. As I move more services away from the
> Vantage UI, staff on the shop floor can see the information they
> need without utilizing existing licensing and Progress's resources.
>
> Ron B
>
> --- In vantage@yahoogroups .com, Robert Brown <robertb_versa@ ...>
> wrote:
> >
> > It really comes down to comfort level (which devil do you prefer? :)
> >
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]