Protected: mv.NET and PDP.NET comparison

I’m frequently asked to compare PDP.NET and mv.NET. I have therefore written this long list of reasons why I believe mv.NET is a better choice. This article is password-protected pending review but will be opened soon for public viewing. Until then, please email for access.

If any of this information is incorrect, please let me know and I’ll be happy to change this text. It’s tough to get accurate information about PDP.NET, which is exactly one of the main problems.

The comments and information in this article are not to be reproduced anywhere in part or in its entirety for any reason. Please link to this page rather than distributing the content elsewhere.

I used to use PDP.NET and for at least the first year after it was in production I spoke favorably about it. In my opinion, mv.NET is now a better product for reasons including those provided here. To set the record straight, there’s no favoritism going on here, axes to grind, or other agendas. I have clients and colleagues who will agree that most of these factors were compelling in their own investigation and subsequent migration to mv.NET. We tried one, we tried the other, we made our decisions – it’s that simple.

Business

• BlueFinity markets and supports mv.NET. That’s all they do, and they are motivated to ensure that the product quality remains high.
• PDP.NET is one of many products at Raining Data and only receives some percentage of their attention. It seems over the last year that it continues to receive less attention.

• BlueFinity owns mv.NET and is completely responsible for the software.
• Raining Data’s sales and maintenance of PDP.NET was by agreement with an individual developer – RD does not own and did not author the software. I believe Raining Data’s license to exclusively sell PDP.NET expires in January of 2007. I’m guessing the original author will take the opportunity to sell his own software to an audience where RD wasn’t successful, and to sell updates to the existing client base.

• As of November 2006, I don’t think Raining Data has any staff assigned to maintain PDP.NET. The two key developers assigned to the product are no longer with the company and it doesn’t look like RD is interested in getting anyone to replace them.
• mv.NET has a much larger staff dedicated to the product.

• mv.NET Support is absolutely outstanding. It is personal, fast, and informative. If I have issues or I need to escalate questions from my clients, we always have an excellent rapport with BlueFinity and it always leads to some sort of resolution as a fix, an enhancement, or a documentation update..
• Raining Data had two people in their Support department who were .NET developers. They terminated both of them and then brought one back. That made me wonder about how serious they were about supporting the software. I believe there is now only one tier-1 technical support person who knows anything about PDP.NET and that person is not really a .NET developer. As indicated above, as of November 2006, I don’t think anyone in Raining Data Engineering knows about the software internals and they can no longer explain or change the software behavior.

• mv.NET has almost monthly updates to the product and documentation. The product is enhanced aggressively based on feedback from the field and there is a list of enhancements planned for the product which reinforce the company’s dedication to the product.
• PDP.NET had one update in 2005 and it didn’t work with the then-current D3 release. In 2006 they jumped directly from version 1 to version 3 – some guess this was just a marketing move to keep the numbers in line with mv.NET. Raining Data does not share development plans with their user base and one can only conclude that there is no forward development plan for the product.

• mv.NET has been supported on the Microsoft .NET Framework v2.0 since it was released.
• PDP.NET still does not yet support .NET v2, which has been in production for over a year now. Microsoft recently announced that .NET v3 is now available. Raining Data simply isn’t keeping up with their audience.

• mv.NET is supported over a wide variety of MV DBMS platforms including D3, Universe, Unidata, jBASE, Reality, and OpenQM. This is because they are focusing on the software as a connectivity tool. The software also supports mvBASE, mvEnterprise, Power95, Advanced Pick, and older releases of D3 – all DBMS products belonging to Raining Data.
• PDP.NET is only supported over current versions of D3, Universe, and Unidata – not their other products mentioned above. They support a competing product as a business strategy to pull revenue from IBM sites, not because they want to offer a full featured connectivity component.

• From my own business perspective, I never get inquiries from companies interested in buying PDP.NET but I frequently get inquiries about mv.NET, especially people who already have PDP.NET and they want to migrate. From a reseller perspective this only confirms that mv.NET is more established in our community, and that increases the sales potential of the product.

• The pricing for mv.NET is better for developers and for end-users. VARs enjoy quantity discounts though Distributors like my company, Nebula R&D.
• PDP.NET has a higher cost, no volume discounts, and the cost for U2 sites is higher than for D3. They penalize U2 sites for not using D3. I believe this only antagonizes the IBM community and has caused the product to lose favor in that large market. From a business perspective that’s not good even for D3-only users because it reduces the potential longevity of the product’s marketability and therefore makes a long-term investment in the product questionable.

• When Raining Data announced their SQL Server Reporting Services component, their pricing was outrageous and they couldn’t justify the price in terms of their value-add. This reinforces the idea that the company goal is to maximize income from existing assets rather than provide basic tools at a reasonable price.
• BlueFinity has announced their own SQL Server Reporting Services interface with much more reasonable pricing and a direct statement of their value-add to support their offering. In this regard and others BlueFinity is simply learning from the mistakes made by Raining Data.

• People tend to question the management direction of Raining Data regarding their databases and support for other products. The company continues to scale down over time with smaller offices, fewer employees, and entire departments being dissolved. (They just terminated their Worldwide VP of Sales and Marketing, their VP of Customer Support and Engineering, and two senior Engineers.) I cannot in good conscience encourage new clients to invest in Raining Data as a company, even if I personally appreciate some of their products and the individual dedication of various people at the company. While my technical exchanges are almost always cordial, professional, and helpful, most business exchanges I have with the company reflect no vision of any type of future.
• BlueFinity is a company owned by MPower1, who also owns jBASE International. Resources are shared among these companies, and there is a common vision and drive for a future. I have confidence that they are interested in building their business and they constantly reinforce the belief that they want to do business with my company and others.