[Info-Ingres] ABF Debugger / NAIUA

[simonl via DBMonster.com]

If you have an in-house developed application which meets all your business
needs with little need for any further development, the business case is
tough.  But it is a whole lot better than spending $3 million to get no real
advantage.  And $3 million doesn't buy you that much software development
these days.  But even for in house development, if you are still doing
significant development better technology can result in lower enhancement
costs.  As you sort of say though, the development has to be pretty
significant for this argument to work.

Where the main advantage of modernising an ABF application (via Transforge)
comes into it is if you are a software house looking at making some
additional sales.  The first Transforge project I worked on made some sales
that it is hard to imagine them ever making if they stayed with ABF.  The
second one I sold only to they're previous customers last I heard, but that
did prevent some of their customers leaving them.  I've seen a presentation
from the internet about a UK company that did something similar.

Re: debuggers don't cost enough: Given that you can't buy a debugger for ABF
for love or money, did you mean they don't add enough value for that argument
to stick.  Maybe, but a few months ago I added a debug to one program which
consisted of writing to a log file every parameter passed to that program.
It took over an hour just to type in the debug.  Try retrofitting that to
every program, and you've got a job that I don't want.

And where do I get my figures?  It's based on what I think is achievable if I
did it again, with a profit margin, assuming only a small cost (<$100000) to
the Ingres Corp for actually producing the Transforge output.  In fact, the
second Transforge project I worked on was in excess of 1000 frames, and took
about 1.5 person years to do the post-transformation adjustment, including
GUI-fying (adding drop downs etc) to all the frames.  So excluding what was
paid to CA (which I wasn't privy to), I'd say it got well under the $500000
figure, but the complexity was fairly low.

Roy Hann wrote:
>>I don't think the budget need to stretch to $3 million for a 1000 frame 
>>app.
>
>Tell us more.  I am standing on the sidelines watching as a ?3 million 
>replacement is being procured for an ABF system.  Where did they go wrong? 
>How would you recommend going about it?  Be specific.
>
>> Perhaps $500,000 so long as the osq generator problem doesn't apply (yes, 
>> I
>> think this one would be a killer).
>
>I'd still want to see a business case.  Where am I going to get $500,000 
>benefit, how long will it take to pay back, and why is that a better thing 
>to spend $500,000 on than anything else I could spend that money on?  (BTW 
>the project that I am watching unfold appears to offer zero payback ever, 
>and none of their arguments for doing it are even coherent, never mind 
>plausible.  Maybe wanting return on investment is just my personal fetish.)
>
>> But my argument was if the development
>> effort being applied to such an application was enough to justify spending
>[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
>> long
>> term development costs.
>
>I don't think debuggers cost enough that you could ever make that argument 
>stick.
>
>Roy

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