Re: Whence should come the frameworks?

Question

At 03:44 PM 6/20/98 +0200, Daniel Nguyen wrote (on the polymorphic
polymorphism thread:
Is it a battle between Forte and Sage ?One hopes not, but this reminds me of an interesting question that I would
like to throw out for comment. With any product like Forte, any given
release can only cover so much. Some of what it does not include is core
infrastructure and for that one has simply to work around or wait. But,
there is also a lot which it does not cover which is within the scope of
others to provide. This is particularly apparent in the case of Express
and Conductor where one can clearly extend that which comes from Forte or,
to be more extreme, one can offer an alternative, especially in the case of
Express.
These extensions and alternatives are really a necessary part of getting
work done, but for those with a mind to it, they also present a business
opportunity, either for direct sale to other Forte shops or as a part of
the value-add in a consulting agreement. But, as one moves on to
subsequent releases, there is a natural tension which arises because Forte
is likely to incorporate some of these same extensions into the product.
E.g., various frameworks have provided security components, but R4 will
have its own security component. Forte is also likely to provide
extensions to Express which are not already in a competing framework and
users of that framework will then not benefit automatically by that
extension unless the framework provider works to include the extension as
well.
My impression, correct or not, is that most framework providers are
offering their products as alternatives to Express and, as such, are
essentially competing with future versions of Express. I.e., in the
current release, one can argue that the competing framework is a better
foundation, but if future versions of Express make substantial strides, as
seems to be the expectation, then the providers of that framework have the
difficult task of making equal or greater strides in order for it to
continue to be the case that their offering is still arguably better.
At least one company, DS Data, has taken the alternate position of layering
their products on Express and Conductor. This would seem to put their
users in a somewhat better growth position since future extensions to
Express should be fairly easily incorporated, either by replacing the
previously external component or simply by being added to what is
available. One might argue that this graceful growth potential has been
achieved at the compromise of having to accept the Express and Conductor
foundations as given, but the importance of this is something we each will
have to judge for ourselves. But, even DS Data has the risk that Express
and/or will advance so rapidly as to take over all of the added features
and functionality now provided by their extensions. Their customers should
be OK since this will simply that the extensions are subsumed into the
core, but it does mean that they either lose a product in the future or
have the challenging task of continuing to stay meaningfully ahead.
It seems clear that the more that comes from Forte itself, the more the
Forte community as a whole benefits so I would hope that no one would
advocate that Forte curtail its framework development in order to leave
that market open for the partners. But, if Forte does proceed agressively
on framework development, then, to some extent, it is competing with
partners that provide frameworks. Moreover, as partners do create core
functionality like frameworks, they are creating things which would benefit
the Forte community as a whole, but they cannot expect the whole community
to purchase their framework. I.e., Company X may have some piece of their
framework which is particularly useful, but Company Y has something else
and neither are integrated with Express which one may have chosen if for no
other reason than to stay in optimal tune with what Forte is doing. As
things stand, unless these pieces can be componentialized and the companies
involved are willing to offer them as such as separate products, the only
way the Express user has of getting this functionality is to develop it
themselves or wait for Forte to add it to Express.
What I would like to ask, then, is what people think of what it is that
Forte could do to make this overall structure work better? Not that I see
it as working badly, especially compared to some other environments that I
have seen, but just that there are some real problems without obvious easy
answers.
=========================================================================
Thomas Mercer-Hursh, Ph.D email: [email protected]
Computing Integrity, Inc. sales: 510-233-9329
550 Casey Drive - Cypress Point support: 510-233-9327
Point Richmond, CA 94801-3751 fax: [phone]
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'unsubscribe forte-users' as the body of the message.
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Answer 1

Thomas,
I think you have brought up a really good question and one that deserves
some attention by all:
customers, partners and Forte. The advent of third-party tools for the
Forte marketplace is an interesting prospect. If I take my companies
product (SCAFFOLDS), the original impetus for building such a thing, was not
to offer an alternative to Forte Express, but to offer an alternative to
building applications with raw Forte. And as such, we have not targeted,
feature compared or analyzed Forte Express to help build or sell any part of
our product.
I think the reason for this is that many of us in the framework business do
not see ourselves as having a competing product to Forte Express. The
reason for this is that we have taken on applications with our products that
Forte themselves would not pitch Express at. The architectural descriptions
in SCAFFOLDS have been used to do everything from simple to very complex GUI
development to Database persistence or communications to satellites.
Because of this, there is some overlap of functionality, but certainly we
see Forte Express being used for a much more limited class of application.
I would question the assertion that it is good for Forte to build more. I
think Forte, like any company, has a limited amount of engineering muscle.
With this muscle they should be concentrating on their core products that
make the company profitable. If I look at their product line-up, clearly
the Forte Development Tool is the make or break product. They should rely
more on the marketplace to provide solutions for things that are outside of
their core products. I sort of take the opposite tact. It seems clear that
the more a third party marketplace finds outlets for their solutions the
more diverse solutions we are likely find in that marketplace. As an
example, if you look at the Visual Basic marketplace, clearly it is big with
many, many solutions because Microsoft defined some specs for add in
components and let the marketplace provide solutions.
I think Forte could spend more time opening up their tool for additions by
third-party vendors. For example, things like object introspection, an open
repository and dynamically adding widget types would do wonders for the
number and kinds of solutions that would exist in the Forte marketplace
today if this was done a version or two ago. Instead, I think Forte spent
much of their engineering muscle on other kinds of products, like Forte
Express. Whether this strategy will pay of for them remains to be seen, but
certainly if they enter the Java world, they will have to change their
current strategy with regard to support to third-party solutions. The Java
marketplace is very diverse today and Forte will have to allow more
third-party integration to be taken seriously in that market.
Mark Perreira
Sage IT Partners.
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[<a href="mailto:[email protected]">mailto:[email protected]]On</a> Behalf Of Thomas Mercer-Hursh,
Ph.D.
Sent: Saturday, June 20, 1998 11:19 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Whence should come the frameworks?
At 03:44 PM 6/20/98 +0200, Daniel Nguyen wrote (on the polymorphic
polymorphism thread:
Is it a battle between Forte and Sage ?One hopes not, but this reminds me of an interesting question that I would
like to throw out for comment. With any product like Forte, any given
release can only cover so much. Some of what it does not include is core
infrastructure and for that one has simply to work around or wait. But,
there is also a lot which it does not cover which is within the scope of
others to provide. This is particularly apparent in the case of Express
and Conductor where one can clearly extend that which comes from Forte or,
to be more extreme, one can offer an alternative, especially in
the case of
Express.
These extensions and alternatives are really a necessary part of getting
work done, but for those with a mind to it, they also present a business
opportunity, either for direct sale to other Forte shops or as a part of
the value-add in a consulting agreement. But, as one moves on to
subsequent releases, there is a natural tension which arises because Forte
is likely to incorporate some of these same extensions into the product.
E.g., various frameworks have provided security components, but R4 will
have its own security component. Forte is also likely to provide
extensions to Express which are not already in a competing framework and
users of that framework will then not benefit automatically by that
extension unless the framework provider works to include the extension as
well.
My impression, correct or not, is that most framework providers are
offering their products as alternatives to Express and, as such, are
essentially competing with future versions of Express. I.e., in the
current release, one can argue that the competing framework is a better
foundation, but if future versions of Express make substantial strides, as
seems to be the expectation, then the providers of that framework have the
difficult task of making equal or greater strides in order for it to
continue to be the case that their offering is still arguably better.
At least one company, DS Data, has taken the alternate position
of layering
their products on Express and Conductor. This would seem to put their
users in a somewhat better growth position since future extensions to
Express should be fairly easily incorporated, either by replacing the
previously external component or simply by being added to what is
available. One might argue that this graceful growth potential has been
achieved at the compromise of having to accept the Express and Conductor
foundations as given, but the importance of this is something we each will
have to judge for ourselves. But, even DS Data has the risk that Express
and/or will advance so rapidly as to take over all of the added features
and functionality now provided by their extensions. Their
customers should
be OK since this will simply that the extensions are subsumed into the
core, but it does mean that they either lose a product in the future or
have the challenging task of continuing to stay meaningfully ahead.
It seems clear that the more that comes from Forte itself, the more the
Forte community as a whole benefits so I would hope that no one would
advocate that Forte curtail its framework development in order to leave
that market open for the partners. But, if Forte does proceed agressively
on framework development, then, to some extent, it is competing with
partners that provide frameworks. Moreover, as partners do create core
functionality like frameworks, they are creating things which
would benefit
the Forte community as a whole, but they cannot expect the whole community
to purchase their framework. I.e., Company X may have some piece of their
framework which is particularly useful, but Company Y has something else
and neither are integrated with Express which one may have chosen
if for no
other reason than to stay in optimal tune with what Forte is doing. As
things stand, unless these pieces can be componentialized and the
companies
involved are willing to offer them as such as separate products, the only
way the Express user has of getting this functionality is to develop it
themselves or wait for Forte to add it to Express.
What I would like to ask, then, is what people think of what it is that
Forte could do to make this overall structure work better? Not that I see
it as working badly, especially compared to some other environments that I
have seen, but just that there are some real problems without obvious easy
answers.
=========================================================================
Thomas Mercer-Hursh, Ph.D email: [email protected]
Computing Integrity, Inc. sales: 510-233-9329
550 Casey Drive - Cypress Point support: 510-233-9327
Point Richmond, CA 94801-3751 fax: [phone]
To unsubscribe, email '[email protected]' with
'unsubscribe forte-users' as the body of the message.
Searchable thread archive <URL:<a href=
"http://pinehurst.sageit.com/listarchive/">http://pinehurst.sageit.com/listarchive/</a>>
>
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