CA/World '95
by Mike Meyer
Member-at-Large
"Wow!"; "We never expected this!" "What a production!" These were only some of the comments made by attendees of one of the largest user association meetings in the United States -- CA/World in New Orleans. Held from July 17-21, it virtually took over the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center not to speak of all the large hotels and many small ones in downtown New Orleans. Ingres World meetings were held in the Hotel Inter-Continental where attendees were treated to a wide array of topics and speakers. In all, over 15,000 people descended upon New Orleans during this hot summer week.
The opening address by Computer Associates CEO Charles Wang on Monday, July 17th was sparked with tidbits and anecdotes on everything from the heat in New Orleans to the careful use of new technology. His message was clear -- we should be very careful to understand requirements before blindly using new technology. Speaking of new technology -- his announcement regarding CA/UniCenter/TNG (The Next Generation) and its use of Virtual Reality was widely and eagerly accepted. Several other new announcements were mentioned by Mr. Wang:
Other key speakers from CA continued to reiterate the company's dedication to Ingres. Mr. Predrag Dizdarevic told a very receptive and ecstatic audience that Visual DBA will ship at no cost with OpenIngres 1.1. He continued to tell the group how he thought CA was doing and where he thought they are going. He stated that CA has an increased market awareness, is shipping products on time as promised and continues to forge new partnerships with Fujitsu, Gupta, BMC, Intersolv and Texas Instruments, among others.
Predrag announced that CA would continue to pursue object technology and forge ahead into new arenas. He commented that the integration of database and application objects would continue with the ultimate goal of a comprehensive integrated Object and Relational DBMS. For OpenROAD, CA plans to provide assistants, more extensibility, application object generation and support for Windows 95 by early 1996.
Futures were an area of considerable interest for all attendees. Predrag told the conference, support for OLE/OCX was coming along with graphical reporting, distributed objects and integration with OpenIngres/ODBMS. On the topic of scalability, Predrag convinced many that the spectrum will be complete with CA-OpenIngres/Desktop at the low-end and CA-OpenIngres at the high-end with fastpath and parallel multi-threaded support with search accelerators promised later this year. He promised that the high-end DBMS would provide parallel index building with parallel backups and recovery among other features. He mentioned that each end of the spectrum would be tied together via replication so that mobile users using the desktop could connect with a high-end DBMS.
The highlight of CA/World was the keynote address by former president George W. Bush. Mr. Bush addressed an enthusiastic conference on Wednesday night. The extremely receptive crowd gave Mr. Bush a standing ovation before and after his speech. Afterwards, Mr. Bush entertained questions from how his golf game may have declined to his thoughts on the problems in Bosnia.
Another feature of CA/World was the World Resource Center where CA and third party vendors presented their products. Several third parties announced tools for use with Ingres including UpFront -- an GUI front end for ABF/4GL applications, A2W -- an ABF to Windows4GL conversion tool, and many more too numerous to mention.
As the conference continued, the area of considerable interest seemed to be OpenROAD and OpenIngres. Several sessions were filled to overflowing and new sessions were spun off whenever possible. The two free multi-session courses on OpenROAD and OpenIngres were filled to capacity as eager attendees plunged into the information. While many had just received their copy of OpenIngres 1.1, there were only a few brave souls that had attempted to install the new release before coming to Ingres World. Without a doubt, the consensus from all attendees queried by this author was that OpenIngres 1.1 is the most exciting server release since 6.0 and has achieved many of the desires of the user community -- certainly the administrators.
Sessions on OpenROAD also gained attention. Most all of the sessions were full of Windows4GL developers gathering information on the experiences of others. Stewart Thain's discussion of dynamic database access using datastream objects was extremely interesting along with presentations on ODBC access, getting started with OpenROAD, etc. OpenROAD 3.5 attracted attention with its equally impressive commitment to true object orientation. It was clear that the Ingres World community is waiting eagerly for the new release.
On Tuesday night, CA provided an impressive evening for Ingres World attendees at the Riverview Room at the Jackson Brewery along the Mississippi River. Everyone attending got the chance to take part in a crawfish feeding frenzy. I cannot say that the author enjoyed partaking in this delight, but it was clear that many people enjoyed this staple of New Orleans along with Jamalaya, Shrimp, and Fried Bananas with Rum Sauce, etc. Served with a sumptuous supply of Jazz and Dixieland, the night proved to be another highlight of the week.
Just when everyone was catching their breath, CA provided another keynote address on Wednesday by Jaron Lanier, the father of Virtual Reality.
Mr. Lanier stimulated the audience with his thoughts on sensory perceptions and shared various sound clips to the delight of the audience. Mr. Lanier shared his perception that the preferred user interface of the not-to-distant future would be virtual reality with programming occurring in virtual cities. He concluded by performing a moving musical composition on virtual instruments.
While this was underway, a small group of Ingres Internet surfers, enjoyed a 2 hour cruise down the Mississippi complete with dinner and stimulating conversation. Thanks to Mike Leo for putting this together.
Toward the end of the week, the conference began to wind down with all the sessions ending on Thursday afternoon. The NAIUA Business Meeting saw the transfer of the Presidency of the organization from Nick Vancas to Charles Hays. Steve Caswell assumed the Vice-Presidency with yours truly taking on the responsibility of Member-At-Large. The challenges of the newly constituted board are awesome, but with all of our help, NAIUA is poised on the brink of some significant growth. Please give your support to NAIUA by joining the organization and providing a clear and uniform voice to Computer Associates.
Thursday evening, Dr. Michael Nelson, the President's advisor on Information Technology, gave the last keynote address to a weary but attentive audience. On Friday, the conference drew to a close with the only sessions remaining those of the OpenROAD and OpenIngres multi-session courses. Ingres World was a time to renew old friendships but it was certainly a time to make new ones. While many of the attendees were visibly weary that last day, there seemed to be a sudden rejuvenation as addresses, phone numbers, business cards and hugs were exchanged. The sadness in leaving the conference was quickly overcome as everyone left for home with renewed technical insight, great new stories and many warm memories.
The conference was not over before CA and NAIUA began to assess the week long activities. It is clear that the technical content of the conference was a resounding success. Over 85 user sessions and 65 CA sessions were held. As expected, the conference was not without problems -- some rooms were too small, the spouse tour program had some problems, minor logistical problems occurred, but the number of Ingres World attendees swelled to over 650 with the number of spouses in attendance more than ever before. Next year's conference will be in August, again in New Orleans. Already, papers are being solicited. Abstracts should be prepared as soon as possible -- so stay tuned for more information.