bin@primate.wisc.edu (Brain in Neutral) (01/12/89)
Digital Review, Jan 9, page 10, notes that Ingres 6.1 is now out, but neglects to mention what OS it runs on. Is is out for Unix/Ultrix yet? (How come I never get any literature or announcements from RTI except a continual stream of letters telling me that Ingres is wonderful and that I should become a customer - when I'm already licensed? What a company.) Paul DuBois dubois@primate.wisc.edu bin@primate.wisc.edu
staff_bob@gsbacd.uchicago.edu (01/12/89)
>Digital Review, Jan 9, page 10, notes that Ingres 6.1 is now out, >but neglects to mention what OS it runs on. > >Is is out for Unix/Ultrix yet? > We received Ingres 6.1/01 for VAX/VMS last week, but I would not encourage you to expect it any time soon. By our judgment, the product is not yet fit for general release. We are a so-called 'First Customer Ship', so that the product has offically moved out of its 21-22 month long Beta period into another 3-4 months of 'Shipped-But-Not-Yet-Available-To-You'. To be fair, Ingres 6.1 seems 90% reliable, but the other 10% would destroy the company if they suddenly found themselves having to deal with all of their clients and their newfound problems. Also, the database conversion from 5.0 to 6.1 is non-trivial, and they may intend not to allow all their sites to attempt the conversion simultaneously. I am also annoyed at the occasional marketing letter inviting me to come and see everything Ingres can do for me when we've already had the product for close to three years.
prc@maxim.ERBE.SE (Robert Claeson) (01/12/89)
In article <114@indri.primate.wisc.edu>, bin@primate.wisc.edu (Brain in Neutral) writes: > Digital Review, Jan 9, page 10, notes that Ingres 6.1 is now out, > but neglects to mention what OS it runs on. > > Is is out for Unix/Ultrix yet? RTI use to release their new versions for VMS first, so I'd guess this is the case now, too. -- Robert Claeson, ERBE DATA AB, P.O. Box 77, S-175 22 Jarfalla, Sweden "No problems." -- Alf Tel: +46 758-202 50 EUnet: rclaeson@ERBE.SE uucp: uunet!erbe.se!rclaeson Fax: +46 758-197 20 Internet: rclaeson@ERBE.SE BITNET: rclaeson@ERBE.SE
davek@rtech.rtech.com (Dave Kellogg) (01/14/89)
In article <114@indri.primate.wisc.edu> bin@primate.wisc.edu (Brain in Neutral) writes: >Digital Review, Jan 9, page 10, notes that Ingres 6.1 is now out, >but neglects to mention what OS it runs on. I haven't read the article, but it certainly would seem odd if they neglected to mention what OS it was on. I read the press release we did (which are usually the foundation for such articles in the industry tabloids) and it most certainly did mention that the operating system on which it is currently shipping is VAX/VMS. The UNIX ports will follow and I personally am not in a position where I can give you dates. If I were a customer (as I indeed used to be before becoming an employee) I would contact my sales rep. If you aren't sure how to go about doing that, please e-mail me directly and I'll tell you who to call. >(How come I never get any literature or announcements from RTI except >a continual stream of letters telling me that Ingres is wonderful >and that I should become a customer - when I'm already licensed? >What a company.) I have a few comments here. 1. If the mailings are what I think they are they are probably seminar invitations. You might wonder why you would go to a seminar when you are already a client, but it's not really a bad idea. I, in fact, would go to sales seminars after major announcements to find out about the new products and to talk to local sales/support staff about dates and technical questions. In addition, there's the free coffee and dougnuts ;-). 2. I will double check with our marcom people anyway, and try to let you know if hunch #1 (above) is correct. 3. I'm not sure which is worse. I have a buddy who is an application developer under another DBMS (he's just a contractor) and he gets nice letters all the time talking about new features, etc. In fact, the last nice letter he got asked him to pay a 33% surcharge for the next upgrade of the system, which was being viewed as a new product (and therefore wasn't free under support contracts). So, as to which is worse (getting only seminar invitations or nice little letters) I think I'd prefer the seminar invitations. Dave Kellogg Relational Technology New York City davek@rtech.rtech.com >Paul DuBois >dubois@primate.wisc.edu >bin@primate.wisc.edu
bin@primate.wisc.edu (Brain in Neutral) (01/14/89)
From article <2596@rtech.rtech.com>, by davek@rtech.rtech.com (Dave Kellogg): > In article <114@indri.primate.wisc.edu> > bin@primate.wisc.edu (Brain in Neutral) writes: >>(How come I never get any literature or announcements from RTI except >>a continual stream of letters telling me that Ingres is wonderful >>and that I should become a customer - when I'm already licensed? >>What a company.) > > I have a few comments here. > > 1. If the mailings are what I think they are they are probably > seminar invitations. You might wonder why you would go to > a seminar when you are already a client, but it's not really > a bad idea. I, in fact, would go to sales seminars after major > announcements to find out about the new products and to talk to > local sales/support staff about dates and technical questions. > In addition, there's the free coffee and dougnuts ;-). I can appreciate the rationale for why I might want to go to seminars discussing the subject of major announcements. However, it seems to me that as a *customer* it would be nice to receive announcements of the products from RTI. In fact, I never get anything. But this doesn't especially surprise me anymore. It took RTI over two years to get my licensing straight, including such things as sending bills somewhere other than to me, and then sending a letter indicating that support would be cut off if I didn't pay up. It took a long time to get through to get the manuals for 5.x: the tape was sent, but no documentation. To install it, I had to borrow the manual from another installation. Etc. Don't get me wrong. I like Ingres *as a product* just fine, and *as a product* I would recommend it to others. I don't like dealing with the company (other than tech support, which I have no complaints about). I don't like having my licensing screwed up. I don't like all the answering machines, and not having calls returned. I don't like not receiving product announcements, which, as a customer, I should be getting. Paul DuBois dubois@primate.wisc.edu rhesus!dubois bin@primate.wisc.edu rhesus!bin
jkrueger@daitc.daitc.mil (jkrueger) (01/15/89)
[Paul DuBois offers a few apt criticisms of RTI] I agree. However, our experience is that the other vendors are comparable or worse. RTI has at least treated us at all times with courtesy and cooperation; this is more than I can say for some others. -- Jon --
bin@primate.wisc.edu (Brain in Neutral) (01/16/89)
From article <276@daitc.daitc.mil>, by jkrueger@daitc.daitc.mil (jkrueger): > [Paul DuBois offers a few apt criticisms of RTI] > > I agree. However, our experience is that the other vendors are > comparable or worse. RTI has at least treated us at all times with > courtesy and cooperation; this is more than I can say for some others. I would certainly be interested to know: Do others of you have this same experience? Paul DuBois dubois@primate.wisc.edu rhesus!dubois bin@primate.wisc.edu rhesus!bin
angel@adm.BRL.MIL (Rick Angelini ) (01/16/89)
In article <120@indri.primate.wisc.edu> bin@primate.wisc.edu writes: >From article <276@daitc.daitc.mil>, by jkrueger@daitc.daitc.mil (jkrueger): >> [Paul DuBois offers a few apt criticisms of RTI] >> >> I agree. However, our experience is that the other vendors are >> comparable or worse. RTI has at least treated us at all times with >> courtesy and cooperation; this is more than I can say for some others. > >I would certainly be interested to know: Do others of you have >this same experience? > >Paul DuBois >dubois@primate.wisc.edu rhesus!dubois >bin@primate.wisc.edu rhesus!bin I have always found the RTI tech support people to be very helpful (I even like the answering system!) In general, the sales staff has been very responsive (although for a time we had a new sales rep every couple of months - but even that's settled down!) I have not had any trouble getting installation documentation with my tape. (Although on several occassions I was shipped VMS release tapes for my BSD system. Maybe that was a hint on their part?) However, we are a UNIX shop and have been using Ingres for about 5 years, so we are used to being the step-children of the company |-( (Sorry about that!) Yeah, I've just recently received about 8 invitations to a local seminar to introduce me to how great RTI is. They don't need to sell it to me, it's already here! I do agree that the existing customers have not been as well informed as they should be. RTI used to publish a nice glossy magazine which came out quarterly (I think), but I've not seen that in about a year.
overby@agrigene.UUCP (Scott Overby) (01/17/89)
In article <120@indri.primate.wisc.edu> bin@primate.wisc.edu writes: >From article <276@daitc.daitc.mil>, by jkrueger@daitc.daitc.mil (jkrueger): >> [Paul DuBois offers a few apt criticisms of RTI] >> >> I agree. However, our experience is that the other vendors are >> comparable or worse. RTI has at least treated us at all times with >> courtesy and cooperation; this is more than I can say for some others. > >I would certainly be interested to know: Do others of you have >this same experience? We tried Oracle for 30 days and returned it unsatisfied. We have since received mail and an upgrade tape assuming we still had a valid license. After a call to Oracle, they said to return the tape with an explanation. We returned the tape and a few days later we got it back again. I wonder if they use Oracle to keep track of their licensed users? :-)
pavlov@hscfvax.harvard.edu (G.Pavlov) (01/19/89)
In article <467@agrigene.UUCP>, overby@agrigene.UUCP (Scott Overby) writes: > In article <120@indri.primate.wisc.edu> bin@primate.wisc.edu writes: > >From article <276@daitc.daitc.mil>, by jkrueger@daitc.daitc.mil (jkrueger): > > > >I would certainly be interested to know: Do others of you have > >this same experience? > > We tried Oracle for 30 days and returned it unsatisfied. We have since > received mail and an upgrade tape assuming we still had a valid license... Our experience was worse. We tried Oracle and rejected it in favor of Ingres. But the Oracle salespeople insisted that we hadn't returned their tapes, that we therefore had purchased it, and billed us. This continued even after we sent them documentation from UPS, tracing the shipment and showing a signature. The Oracle people refused to confirm whether the sig- nature (the name was legible) was that of an actual Oracle employee... Up to apx. 3 months ago, we periodically received material (but not tapes) from Oracle, assuming we were a customer. Meanwhile, RTI keeps trying to sell us Ingres again. May explain some of the sales figures reported by both :-) greg pavlov, fstrf, amherst, ny
daveb@geaclib.UUCP (David Collier-Brown) (01/23/89)
From article <708@hscfvax.harvard.edu>, by pavlov@hscfvax.harvard.edu (G.Pavlov): > But the [name of supplier] salespeople insisted that we hadn't returned their > tapes, that we therefore had purchased it, and billed us. This continued > even after we sent them documentation from UPS, tracing the shipment and > showing a signature. My former landlady just had the same problem, with a different product. My advice? Put it in into the hands of the fraud squad. That's what they're there for. --dave -- David Collier-Brown. | yunexus!lethe!dave Interleaf Canada Inc. | 1550 Enterprise Rd. | He's so smart he's dumb. Mississauga, Ontario | --Joyce C-B