Hello ...
I am going to attempt to present my case without getting too detailed or
wordy (which I am often accused of).
First let me say that I am a dinosaur. I screwed up a lot of opportunity in
my time, but that is not what I am here to discuss today. It is what it is
and I am OK today.
Anyway, for the past eleven years I have been doing work for an independent
medical laboratory as a contractor. I designed, developed, and implemented a
laboratory information system. Today I maintain this system.
The reason I am a dinosaur is because I have not kept up with the changing
times over the years (my fault). The LIS is comprised of a GUI front-end
written in Java (Visual Café; SDK 1.1 I believe). It interfaces (JDBC) to an
Oracle database.
I am the only software person the lab has (i.e. I do everything). Over the
years I've only run into one situation where we needed to seek outside help
(it had to do with a corrupt table in Oracle; I am not a DB administrator
although I have to be in some capacity).
The equipment at the lab is antiquated. I would say the server is pushing
twenty years old. The network O/S is an unsupported version of Netware (5.0
I think). The version of Oracle, also unsupported, is 8.0.1 and came free
when they did the Netware upgrade eleven years ago. Although we do nightly
backups I have to say I probably wouldn't know what to do should a restore
be needed.
Aside from me, they also have a network guy they call on from time to time
when network problems arise.
Anyway, I believe they are at a point where they are in need of an equipment
upgrade. I do believe that the LIS should also be redone.
[snip]
JC, I mean you no harm by this change of topic, but as a user of
single-developer custom software twice in my career I have some strongly
unfavorable opinions.
The first was a purchased financial management system with pluggable
modules for process management, purchasing, logistics, etc. If Mike was
on the road selling his product we couldn't get service. If we wanted
some customization Mike would sell us his version of what we wanted.
Worked OK most of the time. Unix server, Telenet over a Netware LAN,
VT100 terminals.
The second was some sort of ERP product developed and distributed by the
home office in Ukraine. Java based GUI, crashed several times a day. I
know some what Ukrainian GUI labels mean in English. ( I think there was
some code in there that didn't pay attention to Locale) We didn't trust
reports... but the home office did.
I'm sure there is some homegrown enterprise software that works
perfectly well.
JH
