Folks,

The powers that be don't like me posting anything to do with jobs here, but I know that this is where the gurus hang out, so here goes anyway.

I'm looking for someone to help kick start a big Maintain project and train me along the way. Please check out the full posting in the Jobs forum.

Thanks!

george

Ah, but its not really a job, but some intense guidance and assistance.

Wish I could help, but my maintain is 10 years out of date, and then there is the timezone issues.

Hmmm.... Could I get them to pay for a ticket to Oz I wonder ! ?? Unfortunately not ..

I have to be honest, we tried using maintain a few times and never quite got it to work. The GUI became very complicated to work with doing anything event remotely complex and the migration process was awful. The maintain GUI acts like the html composer...

We did however have great success with the modify language that's part of webfocus, i'd recommend using it over maintain. We've written a few small/medium sized transactional systems using it as it was a lot of fun too (at least to me it was).

Tim, it was fun (and fulfilling) because it was coding, not some awful GUI tool...

Although I hate the GUI as much as the next, I have to admit that when I was using maintain, I was very impressed with the the language, and the object orientedness (is that a word). It was well thought out and very capable.

George,
Is the project highly interactive?
If not, MODIFY is quite sufficient (and free).

Good morning,

I have designed & built simple to very significant applications utilizing Maintain that function perfectly in all the popular browsers. Combining Maintain with JavaScript enhances its power to provide creative screen formatting and operation including sub-second screen response to most operations.

Like all other languages, Maintain has some "got-yas" but there are always creative workable solutions to develop professional quality IT systems.

Feel free to contact me for more info...

Nick

Regrettably, for us codgers, MODIFY hasn't moved with the times to provide a user interface that works with modern operaing sytems. I have many MODIFYs that run daily and hourly under ReportCaster control.

What I'm faced with now is to develop an application where there is a lot of user input and since we already own (and pay big money for) Mantain, that would seem to be the avenue of choice. .... Although I would be open to suggestions..the project does involve extracting information from several different types of databases and displaying it on a single screen and then saving the aggregated information to a new database.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: George Patton,

George,
You say "a lot of user input".
Does the application necessitate interaction, a hierarchy of forms - the user inputs something after which he is prompted differently according to the input, and that would direct you to MAINTAIN or just a lot of data which is then entered into the data base, for which MODIFY would be simpler?

May I ask why you have decided to use IBI WebFocus/Focus as a database platform?

EDIT: Ah, I see it provides a GUI as well...

The application is for Bills of Lading, of which there are two types: Straight and Ocean. Each has to be treated slightly differently, because of the mode of transport.

In this application the user will select an order number. The program will go and pick up the customer, product codes and quantities from a flat file generated by a legacy application. It will then go to our CRM application in Lotus Notes and pick up the customer name and correct billing and shipping address. Then it will access a DB2 database to pick up the product description, packaging information, and hazardous information. This, obviously, is where the strength of WebFOCUS lies - being able to tie together information from disparate data sources.

The application will generate a sequence number, which becomes a Bill of Lading number - Different sequence for Straight and Ocean BLs.

The information will be displayed on the screen and all of it has to be editable, with additional information being added a that time, such as the name of the vessel and the voyage number, date of departure and so on. All the product information has to be editable, because quantities can change even as the containers are being loaded (Not enough space, etc.), and many products are considered non-hazardous in small quantities but hazardous once they cross a certain threshold.

Similarly, the shipping address and other items can change at the last minute.

Once all the information is correct it will be saved to a new database and from there it will be necessary to generate these printed Ocean Bills of Lading - in different formats for each shipping line, as well as the Straight Bill of Lading.

George,

If I understand you correctly, the user just inputs the order number (or even selects it from a list). Once that is done, you want to collect all the disparate data, create the BoL and display them together. All these data should be in text boxes can be changed by the user, after which all the data are written to another database.
If you don't want to go via the MAINTAIN route, it seems to me that you could use TABLE to retrieve; then display either with the painter or something else (I use something else); then MODIFY to write to your other database.

That is mostly how we do it here.

Danny: Sort of. Imagine an order with 30 products. These will need to be displayed in a list box, with each one being a clickable link so tha the detail for each product can be changed.

The rest of the information would probably fit on a single page, it's true.

One of the issues here is the limited amount of money avaialable to develop this solution and a lack of knowledge/talent on my part. The managemet of this small company has a huge aversion to paying outside consultants. I have a colleague who moonlights for us at CAD100/hr, which currently works out at USD$65/hr and each time I call upon him the boss complains bitterly that it is too much.

So this is the impetus for getting someone to help me get this project off the ground, so I can do the rest in house (where the pay is much lower of course ).

George,

Maintain is a good tool for the type of application you want to build. I had not used Maintain in more than 10 years before I developed an application with it earlier this year.

There are some good resources with Developer's Studio that can be helpful in understanding and learning Maintain. Under Help -> Contents, there is a main topic for WebFOCUS Maintain. Under that topic, there is another topic called Maintain Getting Started. In there, there a couple of tutorials you can take that are very helpful in providing a basic understanding of Maintain. The main concept you will have to grasp is the concept of 'stacks'.

If you don't already have it, you will need a local development environment - web server, client, and reporting server. You will need to create metadata for the database environment(s).

In addition, IBI has been very helpful and responsive to any questions or issues I have raised. I have been very impressed with their support of Maintain.

George, isn't it time to enjoy the sunset outside of the office?

Yes Francis, you are right. And this year was the one where I vowed to spend more time flying my aeroplane on nice days but that never happened... Now along comes another hitch: my assistant in Miami has taken another job so the whole of the system admin function is now back on me while I hire and train a replacement. There are some advantages in working for a large company where you aren't the only one holding the whole thing together. But the old boss of this company gave me a job back in '85 when I really needed one and allowed me to do my own thing without any supervision since then. So the systems in place here really are my baby, so to speak, and it's hard to let go.

It sounds like the same kind of job that can be done by jsp/asp. If that's the case, and you want to stick with webfocus, I also recommend MODIFY coupled with customized html/javascript/jquery. I've built several user interfaces with them, and they work pretty well.