Whooee! Is it just me, or is this thing a real stinker. Some of my co-workers went
to Sybase TechWave and came back raving about EAS. I sent for an eval and
couldn't
make head or tails of the thing. So Sybase sent an expert out to help me
understand
it and hopefully sell some servers.
I threw them a curve though. Instead of the standard dog-and-pony show where they
use a tweaked out server and studio to show us things they know they can do
well,
I told them that I wanted to install the system on a freshly configured NT
Server
with Sybase Open Client installed and running. Additionally, I specified
that they
produce a simple application to Search, List, and modify a table residing on
one
of our Sybase servers using Sybase native drivers. Note that this was no
surprise,
the Sybase representative knew the agenda before he came to town.
The guy arrived at about 8:30 this morning and had a flight out at 5:00 so he had
to leave at about 3:15. When he started, he was very confident that he could
achieve
our goals in the time he had alloted.
In order to fully illustrate what I wanted to achieve, I built a simple ND 4.0
application
for him. I started with a data source and added two data objects (one for
the search
and list pages and one for the update page). Then I quickly did three pages
starting
with a tabular report page, a free form update page and then a search page.
I took
the key field on the list page and made it into a hyperlink to the update
page and
demonstrated what I wanted to do with Sybase.
He spent about and hour and half installing the system. Then he turned the keyboard
over to me. I must have entered my server name, user id and password a half
dozen
times. It turned out that we not only have to define the server for Open
Client
but for another server component as well. Pretty much the same file but in
different
places.
All I wanted to do was produce three HTML pages. We started with a list page. By
1:00, we had that working but it used ODBC which was not acceptable. At that
point
he took over and I lost track of what was going on. I can't tell you what he
did.
There were dialog boxes all over the place and he was bouncing between at
least
three different applications.
He did get a list page working but not through Open Client. He never did get the
update page to update.
He was getting pretty frustrated. At one point, he complained to the tech support
people, "I just want to find someone to tell me how...".
At about 3:00, I pointed out that we had yet to look at a search page. He thought
for a moment and said, "That would be hard". After seeing what he thought
was easy,
I cannot imagine what hard would be.
By the time he left, he (the sybase rep) suggested that I would be better off with ND.
No kidding.
Truly, I felt sorry for the guy. He is very smart and knows his product well. he is
saddled with a product that is loosely stitched together from many applications.
If anybody from ND reads this, don't worry about EA Server. Just make them install it
cold and run it against real data.
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