What is our primary use case?
At Blue Cross Blue Shield where I work, we have 54 different systems. They are divided into projects. We provide queries against either Db2 or Microsoft extracted data. You can write an SQL code against a COBOL file. You can type in there, you can read and write any type of data sets, big or little, and you can merge things.
We're supporting millions of cases. People can go to our website and find every one of their queries. Every doctor visit, what happened at the visit, and that type of stuff. We also provide information for providers. We've also created things for groups and companies that are nationwide and have their own plan, with their logo and reports, so their HR people can access the information.
Previously, I set up a series of WebFOCUS HTML pages that would run a job and query when you clicked on them. I worked at a university, and we could get any historical data about how many people were in a major for the last 10 years by gender, race, sex, or whatever. We could generate close to 800 different reports just with one prompted page.
What is most valuable?
The solution has what is called a mainframe product. It runs on any operating system: Windows, Linux, whatever. Their history goes back to the 60s. While they were on the mainframe they basically invented a core language, or their own scripting language. That language has been used since the 60s and is in all of their products, so if you get to a command line prompt, you can do pretty much anything. Tools like Tableau, Crystal, SAP, and BusinessObjects don't have this scripting language, so they expect you to do everything through SQL. A lot of the tools out there are GUI or ETL-based, but you can do all of that within this core language.
The solution can read and write 500 different types of outputs. You can read and output an XML file. You can write output takes in Excel or CSV files and you can write out to databases. All of that is built in.
Another thing they do that's a little bit unique is that you can read a file and then put out a hold file, which is a temporary file in its own binary format. When you're doing very complex inner and outer joins on SQL, you don't know if the data is right or if your filtering is correct. In WebFOCUS, you can go off to table A, do something, put it out to a temporary or permanent file, then go to table B, do a bunch of stuff, put out a file, and then join the two hold files. You can join up to 32 different files simultaneously in one run, which is a unique feature that I haven't seen in any other tool.
They have a scheduling product called ReportCaster that is rock solid. It works, and it can do load balancing, so if you have tons of schedules on the first week of the month, it can kick off multiple clients to run simultaneously and off they go. If you're into a mainframe product, they're unique. You may not think they can run TCP/IP on a mainframe, but they do.
It is a versatile tool. Now, since they got bought out by TIBCO, there's more of a push on the GUI front end and analytics.
What needs improvement?
Their latest release is called 9.0, and they added some new functions. This solution used to get awards on the level of documentation before they were bought out by TIBCO. Lately, though, they're releasing the product with major changes that are not documented at all. We've caught them on that. We'll ask technical support, "Where is this?" They'll say, "Oh, it's in the manual." We say, "No, it's not. The manual's wrong." Then they say, "Well, here's a screen print showing...Yeah, that's wrong," so we say, "You no longer do that. That doesn't work this way. How do we do it?" Their answer is, "We'll get back to you." I've been fighting with the company support for the last eight weeks to document something that is not currently documented. I know how to make it work, but no one else does because they haven't posted that. The product gets pushed out and the information is sent to documentation, and the documentation says, "Yeah, we'll get around to it when we get around to it." If there were to be any improvements right now, their documentation needs to get in sync with their product.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have 30 years of experience with this product.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Log4j was an issue that hit everybody last year, and we had the solution in place within an hour from the vendor. We suggested something that was an alternative solution and they said, "Yes." That resolved the issue for any external-facing site from WebFOCUS. There was a vendor-supplied solution, which they had certified and verified, within a week, but we were able to patch it until we got that solution. That wasn't the case for other software. Some of those people were like, "Well, you have to upgrade the whole thing."
The IBM product application server requires more work to keep up and running than the amount of people needed to run WebFOCUS. It's stable and once it's up and running, it keeps running.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I worked for this company for a while, so I know that one of the accounts was a big bank that merged with another big bank that merged with another Wall Street big bank. They deal with billions of transactions in milliseconds. Another bank that I worked with in Toronto does all of the ATM transactions for the entire country. There are federal agencies, including military that used this product. NASA used it for a long time.
How are customer service and support?
When TIBCO purchased them, the people changed, but the new tech support people are good. The license agreement for response time changed, so there are options. Blue Cross is part of the gold support, and we get good support. We can get an answer within an hour on any question.
How was the initial setup?
I just did an entire install this morning. It took me about an hour, but that was only because I was writing some documentation. It is very straightforward. Their documentation generally works. The customization of things is very fluid. They allow a lot of customizations, but they're changing where some things are located now.
A team of four people maintain the solution, and we also work on three other solutions simultaneously.
What other advice do I have?
In the past, Information Builders has provided sort of like a quick start to get you up to speed. They help you install it and include training. Ask about that because there may be some mentoring available. They provide professional services for people who need to get up to speed fast and don't want to take six weeks of classes.
I would rate this solution as a ten out of ten.
*Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
