Building The Navy Intranet

wiredog writes "The Washington Post Business section has an article about the ongoing upgrade/integration of the US Navy's computer systems. The $6.9 billion project is the largest Federal IT project ever attempted. The mission is to get rid of, or upgrade, all the old software still in use (including, I kid you not, WordStar), do the same for all the hardware (including, I kid you not, typewriters), and link it all together. There are 100,000 different applications that have to be evaluated, and then either upgraded or replaced. I remember using WordStar. 20 years ago."

Comments

Re:WordStar == pain

[unicron]

For future reference, == tests a relationship, = assigns a value.

Re:Don't fix it, if it ain't broke

[unicron]

Actually, it is farther. Farther is a measure of distance, here, that distance is time. Further is a definition of degree.

Re:But unfortunately, its all MS software

[pmz]

...their goal is to migrate everything they can to Windows 2000/Office 2000

There goes the country... Imagine the entire US Navy imprisoned to Microsoft's products. What a crock. They would have been better off with pretty much any other option, but no, they had to sell out to Bill G. and his hit men.

Pick Databases

[Cuchullain]

I work for a software company whose core business is on pick databases. They are pretty stable, and pretty fast when you run the pick layer on Unix.

If anyone is interested in a look at pick, have a look at www.jbase.com. They provide a free copy of their software for Linux. It is a well known pick implementation. The other one is Universe (also for *nix) which is well known for being damn near indestructible.

Lots of big companies use pick databases. They aren't a new technology, but they are a good working multidimensional database. In many ways they are still inferior to modern transactional-relational databases though.

EDS used to specialize in them, so I wouldn't be surprised if there were more than a few in use within the Navy right now.

Just my $.02

Cuchullain

Your right that does suck

[bogie]

It does also burn me that my taxes are continually wasted on Microsoft software. Whenever any money is spent on MS Office or a Windows 2000 file server, they are wasting my money when a perfectly suitable substitute exists as a free opensource product.

The taxpayers are being screwed(gee something new) when opensource software isn't considered.

Take for example the fact that their are tons of Wordstar installs out there still. This is an obsolete, unsupported,limited function product. Your telling me that going to OpenOffice instead of MS Office isn't a better idea in every possible way? Oh but no, now they get to enjoy the Outlook/Exchange lockin. Even if God forbid every OpenOffice developer died in a bus crash tomorrow, the Navy would STILL be better off then they are now. Access to the code kicks ass and prevents the current situation they are in now!

Also for their custom apps, they should be rewriting these for Opensource OS's and then also sharing these apps with the rest of the government to save time and money. There should be one freaking giant Opensource Software repository that all government agencies can go to for their needs. This of course should be shared back with us, WE ARE paying their salaries aren't we? Shouldn't we be getting something in return?

Let me also make something else perfectly clear. If the entire US government standardized on OpenOffice there would sure as hell be one giant stampede of consultant firms sending there supports staffs to learn how to use it. So that who will we call for support bullshit goes right out the window.

Instead they feed the MS beast and in the end will be more locked in then they were with 10 year old software.

STOP WASTING MY GOD DAM MONEY ON CLOSED SOURCE SOFTWARE!