Lukas Beeler's IT Blog

Yesterday i’ve installed 5733-QU2 on a new model 515. While doing so, i ran into the first problem.

Right now, i’ve got two PMRs open, for two different problems:

PMR 61859,212,848

The NLS problem that i’ve talked about during the installation has not gone away. I still can’t use QU2 in German, and the administrative web interface doesn’t work right either. I’ve got a callback from IBM this morning regarding the issue, and was told that the problem was already known, and that they’re working on a PTF.

I know that software testing is an expensive process and also costs a lot of time. But this does not look like an issue that could’ve escaped QA that took the whole internationalization thing seriously. I wish IBM/IBI would’ve spent a bit more time on this, in order to release a product that works completely from the get-go. It’s all about impressions!

PMR 61860,212,848

This is a new problem that i’ve come across yesterday when testing basic functionality. I’ve tried to import a Query/400 query definition, and received an error message when trying to do so:

(FOC1740) EXECUTE ERROR system -q "CALL QZDFMDB2 PARM('-t' '-f'
'/qibm/userdata/WebQuery/ibi/apps/baseapp/BUDGET1_call.txt')"

I’ve even tried to use the query provided with the redbook sample library QWQCENT, but this didn’t work either, same error message. I’ve got a callback from IBM about this issue too, and was told that the problem is currently under investigation, and a fix isn’t immediately in sight, again because IBM can’t actually fix the problem – they have to forward it to Information Builders, which are the guys that actually produced QU2 (as part of their WebFOCUS family).

Other drawbacks

When i heard about 5733-QU2, I thought this to be great news for the System i community. Finally a decent, System i based, graphical query application. But there are some serious drawbacks that you need to consider. I fully hope that IBM will try to improve the situation for their customers, but not all of these points are easily fixable. Of course, QU2 is still miles better than the age-old QU1.

• Separate pricing (named user, instead of the 515/525 concurrent user model)
• Separate software maintenance (Why? I don’t understand this at all.)
• Convoluted installation (requiring about 4-6 hours!)
• The slow speed when working with it’s web interface (i expect sub-second response time on every click for an intranet web application)
• Slow report generation speed
• Usability and looks like it escaped from 1995
• Cumbersome data handling, moving away from native i5/OS integration using *LIBL etc. which was very convenient for *QRYDFN
• Incomplete functionality (e.G. can’t delete unnecessary metadata)
• PDF generation doesn’t work completely (that’s even documented in the redbook)

It could look better, really

If you haven’t worked with QU2 yet, see the screenshot to the right. Does this look like a web application straight from the year 2007? No. It looks like it was made and created in 1995, using CGI programs written in C. The response times are awful – i expect a click to have an immediate impact, with barely no waiting time. This is not the case with 5733-QU2. Especially in the Report Assistant, you might have to wait multiple seconds until a window closes or a new one opens. I don’t find this to be acceptable.

Now, IBM can actually make web interfaces that look kinda decent and 2007ish. As you can see to the right, this is the HMC v7 web interface, which actually looks good. I’ve never used it though.

There’s are several products that come pretty close to my expectations of a decent web interface – Gmail< /a>, Google Reader, and the Microsoft Exchange 2007 Outlook Web Access (nice flash demo), the latter is also pictured to the right. All of these applications are snappy, react in a sub second manner, are fully interactive, have decent graphical dress, support full drag and drop, and integrate nicely into their native environments.

I’m obviously not the only one complaining – New Generation Software, Inc. published a document about the QU2 drawbacks.

Why doesn’t QU2 look like a decent web application from 2007? Why is it so slow? Why doesn’t it integrate nicely into i5/OS’s DB schematics? Why are there such show stopping bugs with basic functionality?

I DO want a decent replacement for Query/400. I DO want our customers to move into the current time. But IBM isn’t making it easy. I hope though we will have fixes for all these open PMRs soon.

Anyone care to share their experiences with QU2? Anyone already working on a roll out plan?