I'll add my penny since what assistance I've gotten from Willowsbye has not even been that. They took beginning catloguing information from me last May (1995) and I haven't heard anything from them since. Go figure--- Carole ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: Database Software (Multi Mimsy) Author: Museum discussion list <[log in to unmask]> at CEC-INTERNET Date: 4/8/96 11:49 AM This is a bit of a manifesto but I've read a lot about this subject here and was compelled to add my 2 cents. First a bit of background. The Air Force Museum is the oldest and largest avaition museum in the world and has been in existence since the '20's. In the early '80's with the advent of PC's a process was started to electronically catalogue the collection. First stop was the affectionately known "Brown Box" experiment. PC's that never came out of the box as no one knew how to program, cart before the horse. We then, in partnership with another organization purchased a mini-computer and contracted for a management package built on Oracle. We found, as others have, how difficult it is to convey the specifics to programmers of the museum business. Being a programmer myself I feel free to say this. A breakdown in communcation between the project leaders and the programmers resulted in a product that was less than what was required. Not being involved at this point I can say they made a mess of it. The product ended up not being relational, data being entered again and again. In 1989 I was given responsibility to debug the system, yes me not the programmers. As I identified more and more problems two things occured 1) the product was found to be lacking (understatement) and 2) the decision was made that we needed to be autonomous, the other organization controlled the mini. 1991 a team composed of myself (my first eight years were as a cataloguer and then the added duties of database manager), another computer specialist, members from the registrars office, archival office, and the loan administrators (we have a large loan program - 18,000 items on loan). The team identified processes and requirements for a management program. At this point solicitations were made and programs demo'd and reviewed. We then, 1994, began the contract process and the contracting office narrowed it to two Multi Mimsy and Argus, and the majority of users were most impressed with Mimsy. Commentary: We had heard all of the negatives about support and Willoughby - but the product was built on Oracle, one of the industry leaders in RDBMS software and related products and was a major selling point. As you'll be happy to see now I'll get to the point, sometimes you've got to see if people are really interested. LOL. We installed and were trained in December of 1994. We have had all the initial fits and starts of a new program. Some minor bugs to be removed LAN/WAN equipment to configur, those kind of things. The first year has been spent getting users used to the software and the flow of data entry. I have been most impressed with the logical flow of the program, as you know it covers all the processes of a museum. The modules have a seamless flow to them that makes it very user friendly. An artifact can be catalogued as in depth as you have information or as basic as nomenclature and donor if thats all you have. Most users with basic knowledge can perform complex database queries within the application and for more knowlegeable users SQL*Plus and PL*SQL are included in the package. These last two come in real handy for cleaning up legacy data. The prior package used the same fields for different types of data and to move them requires a more robust language and it makes corrections of data much simplier than a record by record update. Support: I find all the negative statements about their support amazing. Of course I only have my own contacts to draw on but, people what do you want - hand holding. Any problem or question that I have had has been handled on the fast track. If support personnel are not available at the time of the call the service has been handle that day. What more can you expect? If the support can't be handled over the phone then a dial in connection is made and the support question resolved. Do you get this from AOL, the phone company, cable -- come on -- be there in a four hour window and they might show up. There have been some growing pains at Willoughby, after all it is a niche business that they are in but people are being added which should help things. I have to give support a 10. Summary: Multi Mimsy is a multi discipline museum software application, It is very difficult to be all things to all people. As a whole the package is excellent, built on an Oracle engine which is powerful but user friendly was a good starting point. The Windows interface is slick and navigation will be familiar to most users. As I've said before on a 10 scale I give MM an 8 1/2. Jerry Baker LAN/Database Manager USAF Musuem The comments and observations are my own an do not necessarily reflect the views of The US Air Force or US Government.