95 / 5 / 1 usage rule Viewer to Plus to Desktop

Question

Hi,
Russ Proudman wrote this in a Discoverer Discussion post recently:
"At many clients and presentations I strongly recommend the ol' 95 / 5 / 1 rule being that you have 95 users using Viewer, 5 users using Plus and maybe 1 with Desktop (and most likely that's the 1 with Admin as well)."
I am wondering, is this the standard rule for most places? If so, why this rule?
In my last workplace, we used the 5/95/1 rule where only a few used Viewer, most everyone used Plus, and administrators used Desktop. Why? Plus is a superior tool to Viewer. The search options, input parameter options (until 10.1.2.2), and sheet display options are superior to what is shown in Viewer (plus more reasons not listed here). The only users who accessed Viewer worked at remote locations - generally, their homes - where access to Plus was terribly slow.
Interestingly enough, at my current workplace, we follow your rule. I prefer the 5/95/1 rule. We are thinking of going to the 5/95/1 rule for 10.1.2.2 due to issues with linking from one worksheet to another using Managed Links. If we don't, we have to scrap our upgrade altogether. Oracle is not providing a solution for us at this time.
Just curious.
Thanks,
Nancy

Answer 1

I can explain my thinking better with the following:
1. First of all, Disco Viewer takes less bandwidth and memory to run than Plus. You can search the forums for the amounts - as I can't remember - but as Plus is XML and Viewer is HTML the difference of info, packets, etc. going over the intranet at work is a consideration. And then, as mentioned, less memory required to use the Viewer version.
2. Here's my soapbox reason:
At so many clients I'm at the 'right' thing for management to say is that "our users are empowered" meaning that they want their end users to write their own reports, etc. Even if a middle layer to make things easier is installed (ie: NoetixViews, BIS Views), end users - even trained - do not use the product daily and therefore create literally hundreds of programs that are badly written, shared amongst their friends and perform 'dumb' queries when not needed (ie: having an index field but by ignorance causing the search to be a complete table search). They usually follow no standard and results are many times incorrect (ie: trying to cross orgs in Oracle Apps?, using multi-currency in Oracle Apps or regular DB tables?, etc.).
So when it's time to upgrade or a new IT manager comes along and tries to put a stop to the prevalence of reports such as "Marge Report - GL Budgets (do not use after Jan.2.2001", "Marge Report - GL Budgets (this is good but run only on Mondays)", etc. it become a large task.
So I've found over and over again that if a company has a few report writers - and of course, it depends on the company, but something like 5 would be good - who know SQL, who know Disco and have taken training, and use the product daily - then only they should use Plus to create the reports, and the other 94 / 95 out of 100 would only run the pre-existing, corporate made reports by these 5 and with the right combination of parameters, etc., a Viewer report should allow multiple ways of seeing the data (ie: by GL Date, by account, between a dollar amount, etc.).
And that just leaves the 1 or so to be the Admin and the same person who needs Desktop.
3. Having said all that, I've also found that many companies just don't treat Discoverer the same as something like Oracle Apps. If Oracle Apps is slow - they fix it with more hardware, setups, etc. and pay for a team of consultants to do so. If Discoverer is slow because the server has been set up wrong, they're running another large application on the Disco box, or users are writing 'slogging' reports ... then the answer usually is "Discoverer sucks ... let's try [A]" - where [A] seems to be the flavor of the day - ie: insert any of the following: Cognos Impromptu, Brio Query, Business Objects, Hyperion (well Oracle Hyperion now) ... and the new fav ... OBIEE.
So by having a good Disco administrator, some well trained, knowledgeable report writers and lotsa' end users running those pre-written reports ... that's where it all works.
4. One last thing - I realize that a company can roll out Disco Plus to all users and keep the 'power' of the end users low so they can only run pre-written reports as described above. This is okay as yes, Plus is more friendly and looks 'cooler' in my opinion. But then it's just the network and memory issue to watch out for. Most companies I've been at don't do this (only 1 to date) but it's a fairly reasonable request. The problem was they should start with just Viewer and see that end users are just happy to get the data. If they give them Plus first, then no one wants to feel 'down-graded' to Viewer later.
Hope that explains my opinion better. Although it sounds kinda' negative, it sure is what I seem to come across over and over again.
Russ