As a new member on the MUSEUM-L, I am very interested in the
ARev discussion. I have used Revelation for over 10 years and have
over 600 customers using products developed with it. Yes, it is
"industrial strength" as mentioned by Bill Vernon on February 7. I also
understand the frustration expressed by Carol Brandt on January 30.
Cosmos, the developers of Revelation, did themselves a disservice by
positioning it in the same class as DBase when it was first introduced.
Their real market at the time was the Pick software users that were
developing full integrated systems on mini-computers and were wanting
to move these applications down to the micro/personal computers. Their
users have always been software professionals, not end-users. Those
were the customers driving the product evolution.
Our Arev products fall into two categories: the "canned" version, such
The Eloquent Curator, that is ready to use out-of-the-box and 2) an
application development tool, GENCAT, for GENeric CATaloguing
applications which include artifacts, archives, libraries and even land
claims. For those applications the tool releases all the ARev power to
you and removes the need for a programmer. No software other than
ARev would have given us the function we have put into our product.
A very knowledgable consultant, Nicolas Maftei, has in turn used our
product to build applications. His proudest achievement is the full
implementation of the RAD model for describing archival material. He
claims that with no other product on the market could he implement the
multi-level function without excessive redundant data.
When I started using ARev ten years ago I quickly discovered that it
was unique in providing a solution for "cataloguing" applications as are
used in museums, etc. I also learned that the development focus was
toward software developers not end-users. In that time I have created
a product that gives the power to the end user and has added a lot of
strength required by applications with large amounts of structured text
and fast search capability. We can also print bar codes and easily
interface with various image retrieval software because of ARev.
My future development includes OpenInsight, developed by Revelation
Technologies, to provide a graphical user interface (GUI). Customers
on a network will be able to access the database with a Windows front
end while others may prefer the proven text based application.
I'd be glad to discuss my ARev experiences with anyone contemplating
collections management software. Call me at (604) 980-8358.
Regards,
Merv Richter, Eloquent Systems Inc.,
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