Ken Karasek wrote:
> 
> There is another option for Optivity running on AIX. Optivity 9.01 for AIX was
> released in March and has the option to run independent of NetView/6000 or
> integrated. The latest version has been completely rewritten in Java and has
> major improvements over the 8.x versions. Worth taking a look at.
> 
> 


Ahhh.... They finally spit out the AIX version of 9.x, eh?  About
the time we grew impatient waiting for the release it looked like
our shared infrastructure was going over completely to switched,
and we dropped our support contract for this and many other
reasons.

Subsequent budget constraints have conspired to keep the shared
hubs alive, and it now looks like I'll need to support them for
at least another year or two.  So I need to keep at least the
minimum subset of Optivity components around to manage my 
s3000 kit - of which I have quite a bit.

We did briefly look at some installations of Optivity 9.0 under
HP Openview on Solaris, and were less than impressed.  As were
the people that had just upgraded.  It pretty much brought the
box to its knees.  I hear that the subsequent releases have
addressed this issue to a degree, and I'd be very interested
to hear comments from people running Optivity 9.01 under Netview
V6 on AIX 4.3.3.

I know this is heresy in light of the industry trend, but I'm
fundamentally opposed to this mindless proliferation of Java.
You get a 'New and Improved!' Java version of a once-solid
management app - like Ciscoworks or Optivity - spend days getting
a browser put together with the critically-specific JDK
du jour, only to find out that you've killed functionality
for all the other New and Improved Java Enhanced third party
management applications you need to keep your heterogenous
infrastructure managed.

And it's not just between vendors... A perfect example was Optivity
8, when they introduced OptivityWeb with its Java applet running
Omniview, etc.  Then a while later, they update their Analysis
package to include a Web version of NetReporter.  The problem was
that getting the browser configured for WebReporter killed the
functionality of OptivityWeb.  Nortel's support response was 
'Wait for version 9.  It fixes everything.  Really.  It'll be
out next quarter.  Really.'  Well after a year we got tired
of waiting, extracted the few necessary pieces of Optivity v8
for seamless integration into Netview, dropped our support,
and got on with life.

What does all this have with Netview, you ask?  Just this:
I've come to the realization that the temptation for these
various third-party management application vendors to try
and do too much with their apps is too great to overcome.
Perhaps because they are developed on the relatively feeble
HP-Openview platform on Solaris.  But the net result for
the AIX/Netview community is that these third-pary apps want
to usurp too much of the functionality already built into
Netview.

As I delve more and more deeply into the Netview Programmers
Guide and all its treasures, I find myself relying less and
less on these canned vendor-specific management apps.  Instead
I try to deploy some of the less understood but very useful
features of Netview.  I'm in the process of duplicating the
$100K functionality of TMNC with nothing more than a clever
set of inline scripts and a bunch of autonomously populated
lookups.  And V6 just made my life a whole lot easier!

Once again, I apologize for the egregious digression.  We
now return you to your regularly scheduled user list...

Dave