Sedna Webcast Part 3

Having watched the Sedna webcast yesterday, I was disappointed.

Firstly, I was expecting some more insight into how the development was progressing, and got very little. This was more than likely because my expectations were not met. The first line in the invite was New Capabilities in Sedna Drop 5. Not sure I saw anything I did not know before.

What the webcast (Webinar was the word they used, but I hate this word with a passion. The Americans have a lot to answer for the words that they have introduced to our vocabulary, leveraging is another word that I can not stand.) did focus on was Migration strategies, and this bored me to death.

I think the simple strategy for WAM customers is 'Don't migrate'. They kept mentioning their 'Inexpensive' off-shore professional service which would convert your WAM customisations to Smart Clients, but I can not see this working for many customers. I would rather manage this transition myself with all the heart ache and cost it would involve.

Rich Client customers - there is a point. Hopefully being able to re-use some of your VB 6 code will assist in this process, but there is still a lot to do. Pivotal showed us the Active Form to Smart Client form conversion, but the end result was hideous. I think that businesses will use this as a starting point, but I think they will have to redesign the forms significantly to make the users think they have got something from the effort they have put into upgrading.

Another point they emphasised is the difference between conversion and migration. Conversion being a re-write, migration being re-using your business logic in the new Smart Client. Both methods fill me with dread, and will be expensive, particularly in the regression testing that will be required. The tweaks they stated would be needed for a migration will be more than a simple tweak, if you don't want the end application looking hideous.

I think the 2 days migration time they quoted for a system that has had minimal customisation is a joke. For any of my customers this would be a significant project, taking months of effort to test and deploy.

Don't get me wrong, the deploy and wait for mobiles / satellites PBS is a good idea, and one that I fully support, as well as the ED migration tools and Agent explorer, but I will wait until I get my hands on it before passing judgement.

I am not sure that any user will be upgrading in February. I certainly won't recommend taking this leap until SP1 is out. But I am also hoping that new customers will be willing to go to Sedna rather than 5.9 early in the new year as from the previous webcasts it looks good.

Role on February (more likely March or April!)