At 04:06 PM 10/23/2006 -0500, William Sanders wrote:
Ok - so looks like VFP got snuck in to the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission. YEA! Go Team!
see http://www.ferc.gov/docs-filing/eforms/form-6/viewer-instruct.asp
for more info.
...
See what could be done way back in 2000/1 ??
[long post ahead - potentially QUITE boring - of course filled with
opinionated stuff - my story-side only - MS-heads need not read <g>]
I've been building and maintaining systems for FERC for about 9 years (or
has it been 10 already). FERC, briefly, does 'regulation' of energy
companies (gas, electric, oil). So, they have a lot of 'legal filings',
briefs, blah blah blah. Companies have to get FERC approval for various
operations (btw - there was a lot of fall-out at FERC from the Enron bozo's
and the California energy crisis). I categorize FERC data into 'structured'
and 'unstructured' type data. VFP knocks the ball out of the ballpark for
the structured data needs.
FERC "contracts out" it's IT stuff. I'm actually a subcontractor to a prime
contractor. The IT stuff is MS. So, you guessed it, the prime contractor
loves everything .Net (before that it was COM, before that ASP, before
that...Frontpage? not sure... whatever). So there is a lot of stuff on the
FERC website regarding filing information, seeing who filed what, yada yada.
Most of the systems I've built deal with 'Form' data - e.g. like your tax
forms. FERC requires the different companies to file tons of data
(operating expense details, plant details, accounting breakdowns, on and
on). This is the place I mentioned had an Informix DB/server that was
costing over $100K per year in licensing costs (or was it 150....). It had
Form 1 data in it and was being accessed by analysts at FERC. A FERC person
asked if I could do something to make it easier to send the data out to the
public. I suggested VFP. So in a couple days I wrote a 'conversion' program
to get the data out and put it into a VFP DB. They had Crystal Reports
hitting the Informix DB. So I took that and 'repointed' it to the VFP DB.
They created CDs with the CR stuff and VFP DB to send out. Then I suggested
trying to have FERC access the VFP DB instead of the Informix DB. We tried
it, and it was a LOT faster and responsive. They ripped out the Informix
DB/server so fast I didn't get a chance to do specific performance
comparisons. This all happened in about 2 weeks IIRC.
After that, FERC asked me to look at building a complete software system to
handle filing, loading, etc data. If you counted the number of data entry
'items', it was along the lines of 1,000 to 1,500 (for the first Form -
Form 1). There was no way a Web page would work well with that. And on top
of that, companies didn't want any data leaving their facility and going to
FERC until it had been through an internal audit. So this is where I
started implementing Web-aware, distributed database, distributed
processing systems. The rest is history...
There are 5 systems fully in production and used. Another that is
essentially in production but purely "political" battles with regulated
companies are delaying that thing (it does the job too well - data is too
easy to find <g>). Another is going to be released in a couple months. All
these are pretty much pure VFP, using West Wind on the server side.
The rest of the IT group is neck-deep in .Net stuff (as they were with
previous MS buzz-word software). They would LOVE to just kick me out and
rewrite all these systems. I just shake my head. They've taken years to do
things that would take only months with a VFP project. But, as usual, they
don't care about results, they care about billing hours. <shrug> This is
the world we live in. FERC, for their part, has pretty much defended the
VFP systems because they simply WORK. Most other systems rolled out by IT
do not work the 1st time around. Sometimes not even the 4th time around.
So, you see, my bias, and a lot of my info, comes from this environment. I
could go on for days about the various 'torpedo' attempts by various people
in the IT group to kill these systems.
It is interesting to note that I've pretty much maintained and developed
all these systems by myself. Bill Arnold (yes! from our beloved Profox
list) helped for a while. It was great working with him. He was brought on
board not so much because I was over-tasked, but more that FERC wanted to
have a 'backup' in case I died. Of course, the IT group had a different
goal. They wanted to get someone that could supplant me so they could get
rid of me. Long story there. But when they found out that they couldn't use
Bill to trash me, they stabbed him in the back and got rid of him. Yes, the
contractor IT group generally isn't a very nice bunch (but again, this is
the corporate world we live in). In any event, they've got 30 or so
developers in the IT contractor group to develop and maintain other systems
(it actually may be more - maybe 40 - but I don't track that). And here it
is, I've had no problem maintaining, enhancing, and developing the new VFP
systems for years. Recently, they've convinced FERC I need to 'conform' to
the 'process' they have in place (yep - CMMI-crap). So supposedly I'm not
supposed to talk to actual end-users, or FERC persons - all that comm has
to come through 'experts' to handle requirements and tasking (ROFL - then
ROF-crying). So, at this point in time, what used to take an hour, or even
minutes to fix/address/clarify, has turned into days, weeks, months. But
hey, we've got a process (actually, there was a process in place before -
just not the cumbersome one they want to use).
Well, I've completely side-tracked myself so I'll try to stop now. The
bottom line is VFP has saved FERC millions of dollars. There are some FERC
employees that realize this and continue to protect the 'architecture'
that's in place and actively pursue it's use in future systems. The
.Net-heads of course see it as a threat because they can't charge as many
hours when my VFP stuff is used. So I've got daily battles and idiocy to
face. But, (did I say this before?) this is the computer world we live in
today. I will have to eventually (5 years?) look at a way to move the stuff
off VFP since MS isn't going to release future versions (at least that's
what I've heard). And FERC being a Gov agency (and with .Net-head IT
contractors) will start asking about what will be done in the future. I
have high hopes for the Dabo stuff Ed is working on - the stuff he and Paul
have done has been just awesome IMO. What I'll probably do in the near
future is try to contribute to the Dabo effort and see if I can build up
the same architecture in Dabo/Python. If I can get it done before FERC
starts worrying about future software support, I'm pretty sure I can
convince them to use it (not the IT contractor group of course, but the
actual FERC people).
Ok. Enough already.....
:-)
-Charlie
_______________________________________________
Post Messages to: [email protected]
Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox
OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech
** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the
author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added
to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
