I also used RBase to support Y2K efforts at a Fortune 100 manufacturing company. I used it for at least 2 critical functions during that effort.
Test-scripts for the remediation of the HR system were stored and re-printed from there. There were some 100,000 employee records in the production system. As these were more-or-less "parent" records in the IDMS backend, there were MANY, MANY more "child" records associated with each employee record. So, the initial load into RBase was, basically, the entire set of data for a $20B company. (I don't know, sometimes it's fun just to throw out those big numbers.) Additionally, I used RBase to illustrate a couple of things related to the impact of "date-windowing" using different "pivot" dates/years. RBase lent itself to this as it essentially uses date-windowing to set the default century when no 'CC' portion of the date is provided by input. At one point in regression testing, the programming team came running to my office, telling me, "We have a problem." It seemed that they had applied a single pivot year to every date-related entity in the system. Well, it turned out that any and all surviving dependents of deceased employees, who were entitled to continued receipt of disbursements from their dead spouse's retirement fund were now being denied issuance of same. The pivot year had been established as 1940. Therefore, any dependent whose date of eligibility (marriage_date, birth_date, etc) was prior to 1940 had their CC pivoted to '20' rather than '19'. As such, the system behaved as one would expect, it denied benefits to these folks because they were either not yet married or they were not yet born. To the programming team, this was BIG. I told 'em, "Gimme' 20 minutes." (It might've been faster, but I think I had to uncompress some data.) I adjusted RBase's date settings to match the system's, developed a short, simple, SELECT...GROUP BY, run against these data, and, voila, the pivot year in this case should have been 1920. Okay, that's a lot of detail just to say, "I did that Y2K stuff, too." But, lemme' say that RBase never burped and the internal I/T audit of the project stated : "Having audited several facilities and their Y2K efforts, this by far is the best example ..." I'm proud to have played an important role in that effort and happy to say that RBase was the only software weapon I had in my arsenal ; it was the only one I needed. Steve in Memphis ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alastair Burr" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "RBASE-L Mailing List" <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, May 20, 2005 2:38 PM Subject: [RBASE-L] - Re: Rbase v. Access > Over the last 20 years, more or less, I have used R:Base from v2.11 through > to v7.1. > > For around the first 15 of those years I had a registered copy at my last > place of work (v2.11-v4.5++ Dos) and for the last 15 years, a bit more > maybe, I have also had my own personal copy (v3.1? Dos-v7.1 Windows). > > Recommending and using R:Base at work is pretty easy - it is, after all, > generally somebody else's money that you're spending. Buying a copy and > keeping it up to date just because it's a hobby with my own - taxed! - money > is either stupid or some sort of endorsement. > > Of course there can be problems, of course improvements can be made... but > that applies to almost everything. The R:Base engine has never let me down: > we did a huge amount of Y2K changes at work using R:Base to alter data from > other systems; we proved that a major accounting system package had an error > using their data in R:Base; we got ad-hoc reports out in hours with R:Base > where the main-frame would take days if not weeks - even if somebody could > write the program! Before the days of the Internet we used to do a monthly > update of a copy of a database in around 30 countries using floppy disks > sent by post or courier - don't laugh, it worked well when there was no > other way. > > All things being equal another 20 years is not out of the question. > > Regards, > Alastair. > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: "james hageman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > To: "RBASE-L Mailing List" <[email protected]> > > Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2005 2:09 PM > > Subject: [RBASE-L] - Rbase v. Access > > > > > > > I am finding myself being required to justify the use of Rbase instead > > > of Access at this Univ. Apparently just saying it's way better, see for > > > yourself doesn't cut it. > > > > > > I am looking for some help in examples of why Rbase is better and that > > > is does use a real programming language and a list of major > > > organizations that are using rbase. I know Razzak is doing work for the > > > FBI and believe the US Navy. Others? > > > > > > Thanks much. > > > > > >
