Almost two years ago I wrote a blog entry titled "Why mv.NET?" But every couple of days we still see the same question phrased differently: "How do I connect to/from MV?" My immediate response is still to include mv.NET in your list of options. Here is an explanation why.

My recommendation about what has worked for me and my clients is mv.NET. Why? It’s a small entry price (see first article and I’ll be happy to discuss pricing with anyone) which is more than free but much less than some other options. What’s important is that all of the communications details are handled for you.

I’d like for you to think about one fact for just a moment: People in forums continually ask about "how do I connect this to that". Once you get mv.NET all of the questions go away because the one tool can be used to solve all of the those problems. I feel bad for our colleagues that we see searching year after year for some solution, asking the same howto questions in different ways. After trying many solutions I found mv.NET and now use it for connectivity to (almost) everything. That ‘almost’ part is discussed below too.

"But you sell the product so you just want us to buy it!" Yes, I sell mv.NET. No, my continued support over the last three years is not motivated by potential license sales -my company makes very little on license sales. When I find something I like I try to share it with everyone. The best way I can do this is by guiding people through the introduction process. Anyone who has been reading my public postings over the last 15 years knows that I research technologies, advocate what I feel is good, and you’ll hear about it when I think it’s bad too. I see nothing wrong with trying to avoid doing this community service completely for free, so I sell licenses as one way to help keep my family alive as I continue to do research for my business and our community. Our primary source of company income comes from development services. If you didn’t get it before, this is why the company is called Nebula Research and Development.

So reasons why I continue to advocate mv.NET include:

• The communications is simple and stable.
• It’s cross-platform across all common MV DBMS products.
• The company that provides it is excellent and stable.
• Support is excellent and responsive.
• The product has a future.
• It’s in wide use.
• It’s based on an industry-accepted technology and that brings not only current and not hobbled together but it’s also acceptable to management and for marketing purposes.
• IBM has purchased their own license to the source because they have done their own research and they have also concluded that it is an excellent product.
• My clients who have it don’t need to hobble together connectivity solutions anymore.
• Companies (including my own) use it as the transparent pipe for development of other solutions because it gets us from here to there.

And what was that ‘almost’ part? I frequently have a desire to do *nix-only communications. I want a cross-DBMS tool that will give me the same "set it and forget it" ease of use as mv.NET. But mv.NET is based on Microsoft .NET and it uses Windows Services to manage sessions and licenses. Unfortunately the software will not be ported to Mono anytime in the near future, so I’m compelled to seek other solutions for this specific problem.

I’ll use another blog entry to discuss alternatives to mv.NET and solutions to this last unusual problem. For now I just want to hammer home the point that I was looking for connectivity solutions for years, then mv.NET came along and I no longer "needed" to look. I still look because a professional I need to keep my eyes open and I enjoy connecting software with different tools. But way too many of our colleagues are still looking – in all of this time they could have been writing solutions rather than looking for tools and missing out on opportunities for solutions. If you don’t like it later, change. If you need Java or something else, integrate or change later. For now, it’s here, it works, and if you want to get productive now, I continue to recommend that you consider it so that you can accomplish your current daily challenges.