Michelle,
OK well the general issue with regards to the Sap architecture was purely Abap. Thats all I was trying to say. The application should have been developed with standard sql tools. Now, to work with Sap you need Abap. That is the entire issue.
To work with SAP you don't have to use ABAP. This is the most fundamental concept people need to understand. If you want access to the data you got it, completely outside of R/3 if that is the way you want it. I can give you an example if you like?
That is the entire issue. Of course, there are some business advantages (TO SAP, not to the customer) to the Abap approach, …
There are advantages to the customer(s). A customer of mine in Britain has implemented ABAP code coming from another company in Spain for mass sales order processing. Even if things like this did not happen, why would one want to accept something like COBOL and not ABAP? C, C++, Visual Basic, or whatever are not languages designed for business purposes. ABAP was created specifically for this purpose. Its a new language and people are accepting it. Its a plus for the entire SAP business community and at the same time not a minus to those who dont use it.
but nonetheless it violates the pure C/S applications model and that was something Oracle could have exploited as a sales pitch in the early 90s. That was my entire point.
The word "violates" you are using is a bit strong here for my taste. What is wrong with implementing something different than another persons apps model? Who says model 1 is superior to model 2? Who says SAP didn't find something superior to this other persons "perfect model". Who claimed it to be perfect??? The answers to these questions will lead you to the sales pitches of the companies representing both models. You say Oracle blew it and could have done something about it. Would have been a shoe-in. I don't think so. Both sales pitches would have been so jam-packed full of rhetoric you would burn your hands trying to stop your head from spinning. Thats American sales for you. So at best either company would have had a 50/50 chance either way.
Now I know SAP's system intimately. Most all whys and how-comes and what it all means in the long run. But I don't know this other persons app model. I don't intend to find out either. At this point in time it is all water under the bridge. Move forward. The last thing I want to do is worry or sulk about how our world was cheated because of some law of nature which should not have been violated. Forward March…
Concerning the quote you put up. I think you are implying this has to do with ABAP/SQL issue you have been talking about.
...Beginning in June and July, we're taking our software directly to the senior business users. We're going to ask them if they can get questions answered. If they can't, we'll then have them ask SAP why they can't. SAP will then try to get them to spend another $30 million to build an information warehouse. SAP simply doesn't use the Oracle database (the backbone of many ERP systems) like we can.
Even if it was an issue (and it is not since R/3 only talks to the database using std SQL) I agree with you. I think Oracle is a day late and a dollar short. That whole thing is written so general and is full of nothing but scare tactics and rhetoric. There is nothing Oracle can do on their database that SAP cant. Unless Oracle wants to start using non standard SQL. Now wouldn't that be fun. A knife right in their own heart as well as every other vendor standing on the sidelines.
J
|
