CMMS Software

[Sadhunathan Nadesan]

| Subject: CMMS Software
| From: Sannyasin Sivakatirswami <katir at hindu.org>
| 
| Has anyone built a robust CMMS in Revolution or Metacard?
| 
| TMA is the best, (www.tmasystems.com) and the demo is fantastic... but 
| they want $5,000.00 (!) and while the complexity of the need here is 
| comparable to that of any large institution (like a 10 acre 
| university), we aren't that big in terms of size or budgets.


Swami,

According to one indication on that web site their Computerized
Maintenance Management Software probably uses Oracle as the back end.
That's going to add to the cost as well as the bloat, no doubt.  Anyway,
the point being, it's a _database_ application.

Yes, strong need these days in all industries for web-data base
applications, which is why I'm kinda surprised there is not more
interest on this list in what Pierre has demo'd?  Although, the data
base connectivity still requires a lot of hand coding using MC.  But the
price is right.

Not sure you will find any freeware (especially MC) for this but I
suspect you could build it using MC; if  you had the time  :-)  Or maybe
you want to consider 4th dimension.  Or MySQL on HOL (although without
shell access, it's tough going.)

I'm hoping to evaluate what Revolution can do for us in DB connectivity
'out of the box'.  What I'd like to see is - you design a data base,
you submit the schema to the tool, and it builds working, connected
data entry screens for you at a button push (maybe ugly, but working,
including master-detail type forms).

That's what Unify's NXj does (www.unify.com) or Ampercorps Zerocode
(www.zerocode.com), however, they are expensive professional tools.
Meanwhile tools like Jbuilder or Sun's freeware require you know all kinds
of details about enterprise java beans and stuff, big learning curve.
The MS studio.net stuff is powerful for building too but you have to be a
(no thanks) MS shop.

Pierre's simple cgi approach is pretty darn powerful if you like MC.

Aum Aum

Sadhu