Dang, but that story is simply amazing..
I've fought it most of my career, so I've got the tee shirt..
Bottom line.
Define your process flow with paper forms.
Automate the paper forms
Results will save your butt and you need to deliver your results to the
business stake holders, NOT the IT Group as the majority of the time they're
building their empires and don't have a clue what the business process
actually is.
Virgil Bierschwale
Armstrong and Skipper Real Estate
(830) 329-6774 Cell
(830) 864-4726 Home
(830) 864-4799 Fax
http://www.bierschwalesolutions.com
http://www.bierschwale.com
http://www.virgilslist.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Charlie Coleman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "ProFox Email List" <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2006 8:47 AM
Subject: Re: get yer FERC On
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
[excessive quoting removed by server]
_______________________________________________
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.
