Re: Change management systems

[Vern Hamberg <vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

David

The only product people were not happy with is SoftLanding's TurnOver, I 
believe. And not because it is a bad product - because of gouging as to 
maintenance and support fees. We had an agreement with one of the former 
principles there, for maintenance only, and a perpetual license. The new 
owners tried to get us to upgrade, but it would have been a 
one-year-license only - after that, we would not have been able to use 
the product. We refused, since we do have that permanent license. Of 
course, we do not have support, so we carry on, anyhow, and are looking 
generally for a replacement. As a software house that produces more than 
just iSeries software, we have broader needs than some iSeries-mostly shops.

The problem you describe here will NOT happen if you set up any of the 
SCM (software change management - changing your acronym) products.

I don't know your home-grown tool, so I can't speak to whether it is 
adequate. But do contact David Gibbs directly - and he can certainly 
arrange a demo of their Implementer. Also, get a demo of Arcad (French 
company, I believe). Arcad developers have created a couple WDSC plugins 
that are nice - especially the 5250 one. And the developer of that was 
very responsive. Many former SoftLanding employees now work for Arcad 
here in the States. And Aldon, if you want - I did not mention it 
because I had a little bit of a bad experience with them about 12 years 
ago. But listen to others who use it today for a better perspective. 
There is also that other party I listed - I forget now - SEE/CHANGE is 
the product, I think. Look in the archives here for posts about that 
product - search on "see/change" - it was said that it is quite easy to 
set up and use.

Key to any of them is setting them up.

But do get some online demos, if possible, so you can fairly compare and 
see if it is worth the effort. They are not free, but neither is the 
time you take to modify or rewrite your own - and it sounded as if you 
were talking about a rewrite.

HTH
Vern

David FOXWELL wrote:
> Charles,
>
> Judging by the posts that followed yours, not everyone seems to be completely satisfied by their CMS. In general, our home made tool has few problems, but needs a lot of manual interventions before being able to deploy and is often a little complicated. Sometimes there are failures, eg, a developper forgot to indicate one of the workfiles he'd modified and an rpg that used it didn't get compiled. This was not realised until runtime! I am thinking rather that CMS is not the way for us to go given that we already have a considerable investment in our own tool.
>  
>
>   
> > -----Message d'origine-----
> > De : midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx 
> > [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] De la part de Charles Wilt
> > Envoyé : mardi 9 mars 2010 14:11
> > À : Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
> > Objet : Re: Change management systems
> >
> > David,
> >
> > If you look at everything a CMS provides, yes it is pretty 
> > complicated to write your own.
> >
> > Secondly, which would the business prefer for you to spend 
> > your time on, writing a CMS or writing business apps.
> >
> > A CMS should make a developer's life easier, thus even in a 
> > one-man shop they are useful IMO.
> >
> > Charles
> >
> > On Tue, Mar 9, 2010 at 3:29 AM, David FOXWELL 
> > <David.FOXWELL@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >     
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > As we are looking at the possibility of revamping our 
> > >       
> > homegrown installation utility, I'd like to know more about 
> > CMS. I never even heard of CMS before subscribing to this 
> > list. I was wondering what I am missing. Is it really that 
> > complicated to write a utility that takes care of the 
> > development installation and everything that is impacted by 
> > it? How might we benefit from buying a CMS?
> >     
> > > Thanks.
> > > --
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