The previous page was written in the beginning of 1996. It is now a year and a half later. We are almost finished with the conversion of the Mini computer to a Client/Server system. Only three people have been working seriously on this project. I have been directing it, Girish has been our SQL wizard and Marty has magically transformed his Mini background to the richness of the Client/Server environment.
There have been other changes in my life and at Ladas & Parry as a result of this project: David Grossman (oops sorry, well he's in there somewhere) has taken over my responsibilities for the Trademark Watch Department. Actually this development was less the result of the conversion project, as it was due to the fact that Donald Miller left at the beginning of the year. Donald had really been running the core function of the department for many years. So now David is officially in charge and I will be able to devote my full attention to the conversion of the remaining information systems of Ladas & Parry.
Work on the mainframe conversion has also started. This time we won't have to re-write the entire system from scratch, a popular industry specific software package forms the basis for the new system. We are now discussing merging some existing MS Access inquiry screens into this applications. Then we'll do some minor restructuring of the main record and move the data in for performance testing. If everything looks good at that point, the main record will get its final structure and related tables will be created.
Mainframe conversion has started, yeah right, what a joke. It might have, except for some unanticipated events. Lesson learned: Never underestimate politics when it comes to mainframe conversions. In November of 1997 our managing partner retired and with his departure his dream of having the whole firm on one compatible database died. The management committee now feels that getting a state of the art law firm practice system is more important, and oh yeah, it comes with accounting software too.
Other changes in early 1998 helped to all but shut down program development here in NY: Girish left for a much higher paying job with one of the financial institutions in town. And at the same time we started to experience rapid turnover of our PC support staff, which meant that Marty and I were increasingly being drawn into this area. By May a new SQL programmer was hired, but the difference in experience and the lack of familiarity with our divers systems made for a slow start. By the fall of 1998 pressure from the partnership to conclude the mainframe conversion mounted, when in reality it hadn't even started.
Meanwhile, we had been given diversionary projects, such as adding bar coding to the opposition file labels. Also around this time, certification requests from our clients regarding the Y2K problem started to mount, and it became clear to me that we would have to start converting our Access 2.0 applications to Access 97 in order to achieve Y2K compliance for the new Trademark Watch system.
When we started writing the Trademark Watch system, Access 2.0 was the latest version available. When we were in the middle of development, Access 95 came out. We all but ignored Access 95, and decided to wait for the 97 release in the hope that all problems would be fixed there. Actually, I had made a big tactical mistake.
When we started developing with Access 2.0 we found some problems and reported them to Microsoft. They were serious enough for the head of Access development at Microsoft to offer us beta participation for Access 95. Somehow we were too busy at the time to take advantage of this opportunity, that was a big mistake. Never assume that there are many other people out there using the product in the same way that you are. This was a mistake that I will not repeat.
So we started converting the 16 bit Access 2.0 applications to 32 bit Access 97 in the fall of 1998. There were problems of course, some serious and some trivial. This was also a perfect opportunity to reorganize individual applications in different mdbs so that they would be easily available to staff members who need them. This required additional security. In short it wasn't just a conversion, there was a certain amount of reworking involved here. Some applications were so rough in the code that I decided to re-write them completely. A two months endeavor in one case. Not all Access 2.0 applications have been converted yet.
Actually most of the year 1998 was spent cleaning up, and getting ready for Y2K. No surprise there I guess. Except for me, I'm surprised that we could lose our momentum so suddenly.