Re: Migrating from SQR 2.5 to SQR 4 on VMS, using InSQRibe

[Michael DeAngelo <Michael.DeAngelo@US.COOPERS.COM>]

Hi Ken, (and the rest of the users group),

Thanks for your input!!!

Actually it is not Oracle Financials.  It is a completely homegrown system
that was originally written in Oracle 5!  Has any one else seen an Oracle 5
system that distributed data and did reliable replication to over 80 sites
throughout the country connected by 2400 modem links?  We have since
upgraded to Oracle 7 and the slowest links are via 56k modems, but the
system is so well architected that I continue to be impressed.  I wish I
could say that I had a hand in designing it but I was still in grammar
school at the time...

Of the 400 or so SQR reports that make up the system, probably 300+ are in
active use.   A major obstacle to paring down the number of reports is that
the business rules for the firm are exceedingly complex.  Different
divisions of the firm are organized in wildly different ways.  Some
divisions are flat, some are very hierarchial.  Some units report to other
units in a context sensitive way, i.e. unit A may, for financial roll up,
be a sub-unit of unit B but may be considered a part of unit C for human
resources issues and may receive administrative support from unit D.

Also, the system is the heart and soul of this firm.  Almost nothing
happens without leaving an audit trail in the system.  Every time or
expense item entered by any partner and employee is recorded here,
individually.  Every revenue or expense incurred by the firm is recorded in
this system.  Every bill sent to a client, every payment received from a
client, every change in our org chart, basically every detail of the
operation of our business.  I am amazed that we get by with so few SQR
reports.

I'm sure there is some fluff in there but I doubt that we could pare down
below 250 reports without having the political might to impose a standard
structure on the firm.  Furthermore, we have a short deadline to deploy a
year2k compliant version of the system that precludes us form doing the
extensive analysis that anything more than minor changes to our SQR library
would require.

As to your other questions...
Win32 is a generic term for Win95/WinNT/Win98 - any of the 32bit windows
operating systems.

We currently don't have a PC based SQR installation.  We don't have SQRWP
on site but if it can be deployed without the rest of SQR then our approach
still has promise.  The viewer ActiveX control works without any
executables.



To:       SQR-USERS@list.iex.net
cc:        (bcc: Michael DeAngelo/STT/CLC/Floral Park NY/C&L/US)
From:     osmium@EROLS.COM
Date:     04/20/98 04:13:53 PM MST
Subject:  Re: Migrating from SQR 2.5 to SQR 4 on VMS, using InSQRibe




Hi, Mike!
        An enterprise application using Oracle SQL*Forms 2.3 sounds to me
like ORACLE Financials.  N'est pas?
        SQRWP.EXE is indeed a separate program, and can be installed on a
client without the other SQR programs.  Check with whomever in your
group
did the SQR installation:  oftentimes a DBA or Systems Administrator
type.
        If you want to VIEW your SQR output on the clients, you may need
to install SQRWV.EXE as well.
        Is Win32 the same as Windows 95 (or 97, or 98)?
        A library of over 400 SQR reports?  And many of them very complex?
Did your firm also create this colossus?  With all due respect to
Coopers
& Lybrand, and the rest of the Big Six consulting community, this is not
something about which to boast.  This is something to cull -- Pare --
Whinny -- even if it is a large Fortune 500 firm.
        I once was involved with a Manufacturing system using SQR at a
Fortune 10 megafirm, and they only used 60 reports.
        To make for a successful transition, now is the ideal moment to
do some hard analysis of those 400 reports:
1.  Is there a lot of overlap?
2.  Are the data displayed on one report, a subset of the data displayed
        on another?
3.  Do some of them display the same columns, in a different order?
4.  Are some so similar that they should be combined into one, with the
        user choosing an option?
5.  Are the people who originally requested the reports still there?
Or,
        put another way, does any REALLY want to read that report?
6.  Most reports will have just a few justifications:
        A)  Someone makes a business decision based on the data.
        B)  (If Printed)  Legally required for recordkeeping.

        Mike, as one waxin' vixen to another,
                                Happy computing,
                                Ken Gartman


Michael DeAngelo wrote:
>
> I'm involved in a project to migrate an enterprise application from
Oracle
> SQL*Forms 2.3 running on DOS to Forms 5.0 running under Win32.  The
servers
> for this system are Oracle 7.0 running under VAX OpenVMS 5.5.  We may
> upgrade to a later version of Oracle.  We are trying to avoid upgrading
to
> later versions of OpenVMS due to some other interlocking dependencies.
The
> network infrastructure supporting this is switching from DECNET to
TCP/IP.
>
> The existing system uses SQR 2.5 running on the vaxen.  Our SQL*Forms
> application uses a user_exit to open a network connection to the VAX via
> DECNET's transparent task to task interface (ttt).  A completely custom
> file transfer and viewer mechanism was also built into the application
> using a fair bit of DOS assembly language in order to view the output of
> the SQR reports.
>
> I'm trying to evaluate a migration path using InSQRibe.  My current plan
is
> as follows...
>
> 1.  Embed the InSQRibe ActiveX remote execution object into my Forms 5.0
> application.
> 2.  Use the ActiveX control to start small reports on the server.
>      - Small reports generate spf files that are downloaded to the PC
> client interactive viewing and printing.
> 3.  Use the InSQRibe ActiveX Viewer control to view the spf on the PC
side.
> 4.  Use the InSQRibe ActiveX Print control to print the spf locally.
>      - The print control hooks to SQRWP.EXE
> 5.  Use the ActiveX control's "primitive" functions - i.e. rexec - to
start
> large reports on the server.
>      - Large reports generate plain text files that are stored and
printed
> from the VAX.
>
> I've successfully used the ActiveX primitives to run arbitrary VMS
command
> on the server from inside an Oracle Forms v5 form.  I have not been able
to
> test the high level functionality of the ActiveX control because it can
> only construct command lines for SQR version 3 and above.  We have not
yet
> set up an environment for SQR 4.
>
> My Questions to the Group...
>
> 1.  Has anyone any experience using SQR and InSQRibe in a similar
> environment?
> 2.  Due to some interlocking dependencies, it would be somewhat painful
to
> upgrade the OpenVMS version to the officially supported 6.2.  Does anyone
> have experience with OpenVMS 5.5 and SQR 4.
> 3.  We have a library of over 400 SQR reports, many of them very complex.
> What are the issues in running these reports in SQR 4 instead of SQR 2.5.
> 4.  The print ActiveX just calls the SQRWP.EXE program.  Can that program
> be installed separately from the rest of SQR?  We don't want or need to
run
> SQR locally, only view and print its output.
>
> Thanks in advance for your input.  If the group desires, I'll post
updates
> on this project as it progresses.
>
> Mike DeAngelo
> Coopers & Lybrand LLP