quote:

yes we do have a program for schools to teach WebFOCUS

Thats great to see.

But what about other countries ?, is there any push from that perspective ?

Is IA+ (I assume to mean InfoAssist Plus) a GUI tool and is a GUI tool the right tool to learn about B.I.?

This is a very interesting thread...

I've been In FOCUS since 1983. I am currently on a contract and spending a lot of my time mentoring others while developing BI Applications (Charts, Reports, 'Widgets', and Portals, etc.). I do see the great need for experienced WebFOCUS People who understand the Power of WebFOCUS Beyond the GUIs. People who have the "We can do that in WebFOCUS!" attitude, and get it done.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Doug,

quote:

...mentoring others while developing BI Applications...understand the Power of WebFOCUS...People who have the "We can do that in WebFOCUS!" attitude...

+1
Sounds like we are in similar work environments. :-)

David Briars,

quote:

Sounds like we are in similar work environments. :-)

I Believe that we are... And many others like us are out there...

Tony A,

quote:

You need "How to use search on Focal Point" in there somewhere

And: How to use F1

For once,
I add a comment.
I will need good, very good IBI developers for more than 6 months.
Already have a pool of 3 shared between UK and Sweden.
Francis if you want to take a break from the New World to the Old World (Europe) you are welcome on our side. ...... Luxembourg
All others with good experiences are welcome.
Luxembourg is a very nice little city (like a big village) with good food and goof beers and a lot of banks ...

Damien,
How about an Aussie with 30+ years experience working remotely?
Greg

I've been working with FOCUS/WebFOCUS for 30+ years. About 10 years ago I switched my focus to DataMigrator and iSM. I still work on WF projects, but my involvement is usually reduced to advanced problems, like custom authentication/authorization, Plugins, FUSE routines, XSLT etc. I'm actually seeing an increase of WF work out there, but customers are doing simple - uncomplicated - reports and visualizations. I'm seeing less advanced WF applications, and more embedding WF in existing enterprise apps using Bootstrap with CORS.

IMHO, you can expand your client base by understanding CORS, and how to set up WF for it. If you are looking at learning another language, start with Java and how to build and implement Java Filters, WFRS Java stored procedures, and WFC plug-ins. Leaning enough C to build a FUSE routine will be helpful, but it is not as important as the Java side. These have been critical to my customers implementations. If you are a contractor, critical usually means more money and less actual work.

DataMigrator is also very important at the moment. You cannot build a report unless you have data to report on. Knowing how to properly use DM to build efficient ETL is a missing skillset in my customer base. Understanding the subtleties of DM will make you very important to a lot of customers. I seeing a lot of Big Data projects that have mainframe data as sources, and I've yet to see a Hadoop mainframe ingestion program that doesn't suck.

I think there is still a lot of work out there, but you might have to adjust skills slightly to get it.

Great comments here as we all have seen two compelling variables that can be easily broken down further. The growth of WebFOCUS and the growth of the Market. I’ve been a WF code slinger for about 25 years and although the tools have evolved to increase the developer base, there is still a need for “Understanding” before doing. I think these posts from us seniors reflect just that! Very few consultants can interpret what the clients want and then actually deliver value. This is the core of all successful development. Thanks to WF arming us with the tools to get anything done. This is the distinction of WF compared to any other software around. It is Enterprise level and can place nicely with all the other tools and platforms out there when you understand how it works and implement it properly. This is what the folks on this thread understand. See you @ Summit!!!

Hey icanfocus,

quote:

there is still a need for “Understanding” before doing. I think these posts from us seniors reflect just that! Very few consultants can interpret what the clients want and then actually deliver value.

That a very good point. Being able to effectively and efficiently analyze the requirements and develop the results accordingly seems to be a lost art nowadays. Maybe it's just time for those of us who have Been in FOCUS for 25+ years to FOCUS more on mentoring others more than 'just developing' or, at least, take more of a lead postion.

PS: I like your moniker: I Can FOCUS, obviously You Can.

I like the idea Doug as we have naturally been qualified after years of lessons learned ourselves. Let’s talk about this @ Summit. Oh and by the way it’s me Wayne

Damien,
And also French is my father tongue!

We, for example, are a small team of juniors that through self-learning, carry out a highly complex project in WF. We have gone beyond what WF offers, in just two years, and we are very proud of it.

Edit: And Mariani, thank you very much for teaching us so much during this time!

Edit2: it must be said that the bad of self-learning, there are tools like the Maintain that we do not use because we have not needed / do not know what can help us. If someone had learning documents beyond the documentation of any part of WebFocus, and you want to facilitate them, we might learn things that are relatively basic that we do not know.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: MMoreno,

dhagen, you mention Data Migrator. I've been a coder for over 30 years. I've always be curious as to what does DM do that the core FOCUS language can't? The reason I ask is that a great deal of what we do is extract data from the Oracle database and store it in FOCUS/XFOCUS files for reporting because, as you say, "You cannot build a report unless you have data to report on." The database has over 900 tables and there is no way that users can develop reports directly from the database so we build extracts for them to use.

jgelona,

Theoretically, you could do everything with FOCUS, as DM is all FOCUS under the covers. But my question would be why would you want to hand build the whole thing?

The interface is designed to look and build SQL using a GUI tool. Unlike WebFOCUS, you can test every minor change in the GUI without having to run the whole process. Unfortunately, the interface for joining tables, adding transformations (DEFINES etc) is vastly superior to what is available in App Studio and it's predecessor. I wish they would model the JOIN tool after DM. Also, because it is a product, all those new fancy commands for enabling streaming bulk loaders or DBMS based processing, are all available as properties on the objects. It would be near impossible to stay current with the syntax, even with 30+ years behind you.

All other ETL features are built in (like async execution and parallel jobs), so again, you don't have to learn the syntax. The GUI SQL interface is familiar to non-IB people, so it is easier to find people with the skills start building, without high level FOCUS knowledge. Best of all, you can hand off your work to support staff with minimal training. If you hand build, you would either have to dumb down your code, or put the support staff on intensive FOCUS training to support your processes.

In DM, I never have to edit the flows with an editor. I still have to build simple stored procedures (.fex's), but usually that is just for managing simple runtime parameters.

DM is simple at first glance, but it is very stable and performs exceptionally well. It is truly designed for people with ETL experience and not for FOCUS programmers. Although, with the right guidance, a FOCUS programmer can become a very fine ETL developer.

That's just my 2 cents.

Hope that answers your questions.

Thanks for the reply, very good info.

@dhagen: How does DM compare to tools like Pentaho Data Integration (spoon + kettle)?

We currently use a mix of Pentaho ETL's and hand-coded FOCUS procedures, which works just fine, but I can't help but be curious to what's going on the other side of the fence...

Sorry to hear of your troubles Francis! Wish it wasn't so. Best of luck though!

Yeah, honestly, to be a nice guy, I wish IBI the best, but many of us and our companies will be moving on here soon if certain things don't resolve themselves. Anywho... I no longer suggest to anyone to use WebFOCUS as a solution, sadly. I wouldn't put my worst enemy through this upgrade out of bugs to acquire new bugs heck. We're currently working out a new development stack at our company and plan to build out a framework that enables us to be self-reliant in every way... Will let that simmer.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: CoolGuy,

quote:

Originally posted by Wep5622:
@dhagen: How does DM compare to tools like Pentaho Data Integration (spoon + kettle)?

I've never used Pentaho so I cannot comment on it. The only pure play ETL tools that I've been exposed to are DataStage and Informatica. My customers that use them seem to like them, so I don't want to slam them. I think it really comes down to how you cut your teeth in the ETL world.

For me ETL is a very simple process at it's heart. You take data from one spot, maybe apply some transformations or aggregations, and put it in another spot. Repeat as necessary. Other ETL tools seem to take pride in making this process overly complicated. What I mean by that is there are objects for everything, like objects for each filter/transformation etc. I've done a lot of projects where I was replacing other pure-play ETL tools, and flows with 50+ canvas objects were being replaced with simple to view and maintains DM flows.

I prefer the DM approach of source on the left, target on the right, add your transformations, aggregations, sub-selects, merges as necessary, and go.

I have been in computers since 1979 and used WebFOCUS since about 2010. I have worked with 3 different companies using WebFOCUS. What I usually see is that everyone learns from the seat of their pants when their company buys WebFOCUS. They either stay at that company forever or leave and become a consultant. The second company I worked for, it took them 5 years to find someone with experience. They couldn't keep anyone longer than a year before they left. After 2 years, I was offered a great opportunity at my present locations. My present company knew how hard it was find a experienced WebFOCUS developer and made the most out of my opportunity. My previous two employers have yet to find a true replacement. They keep using IBI consultants.

The bottom line is unless you already have true experienced programmers that can learn WebFOCUS quickly, you are stuck with using consultants. Or the company needs to be patient with results and give developers a chance to learn WebFOCUS via proper training and the Summit. I fortunately also has some good mentoring from IBI consultants. You need to do the projects together and not have them do it for you.

I know of only one University in the United States that teaches WebFOCUS and that is Northeastern. We contacted them and received a list of applicants to do an internship at our company. We are still looking into it but probably started the process to late. Of course all the applicants live in Boston and my office is in New York. But we are encourage by possibility of hiring someone some day from there.

quote:

the company needs to be patient

Thats a rare thing