Well I am getting ready for move number 3 since EPICOR bought out ROI Systems. Friday I pack up my cubicle for relocation to the 11th floor. Somehow the square footage of cubible allocated per programmer continues to dwindle. I am hoping the accountants are not shooting for equilibrium based on square foot costs in Monterey. On the upside the hallways are very wide and luxurious!
As I reflect on email queries from client web programmers obviously schooled in SQL and not so familiar with the Unidata world or the Manage 2000 toolset, it is clear to me that the REPORT.BUILD interpreter and the roiHyperQuery control offer extremely cheap efficient options for exposing ERP data out to the world. Only it is difficult to help them 'see' it. The expectation that knowing sqlCommand is enough is too stultifying. Is it worth learning another layer beyond Microsoft technology? When that layer provides CrossRef and Function Security and F1 help and edit patterns and defaults maintainable in dictionaries on the application server, and dictionary driven queries, and interactive UI screens based on REPORT.BUILD prompt definitions, the answer to me is clearly yes. But you have to expect to spend some time coming up to speed. There is a lot of tooling knowledge to learn.
