🚀 go-pugleaf

I think  that one of the great advantage of the Net is to give you
full support for research and help in all kind of matters and with the
consultant of the best specialists in the world.
Help is exactly what I need to surpass a complicate
thecnical/political situation at work.
I will describe the case omiting my company's name  for obvious
ethical reasons.
This is the situation:

ORG1 - Production/Quality Control area
ORG2 - Planning area with has under control the computation resources
Network: Novell 4.1
Enviroment: Windows 3.11
Equipments: Pentium 100 MHz , 75 Mhz and 586s 100 Mhz

Note: There is no intention concerning changes in the Operational
System, so sugestions recommending migration for Windows 95/97 will be
of no value. This is a temporary job that will last until aproximately
the end of 98.

ORG1  is working with data related to follow-up of non-destructive
tests (NDT) processing at the moment 240.000 registers and with a
tendency to reach 600.000 at the endo of the job. 
Those data are generated in a mainframe computer and transfered via
delimited txt (text file) files to our micro-computer network where
they are imported to MS-Access to be used through consults by our QC
department.
The reason why the data are generated in the first hand on a
mainframe, has to do with contractual reasons and those aspects are
not necessary for one give consultant to this case.
The conflict was installed when ORG1 aiming to use its micro-computers
in the maximum of their capacities ask the General Manager the
purchase of memory data-banks to supply 5 (five) of their micros with
64 Mb of RAM.
The General Manager sent the requisition to the planning manager to
analyse.
The Planning Manager after a brief analysis recommended to abandon the
use of MSAccess and change to work with Clipper in DOS mode which in
his opinion will deal better with such amount of data besides the fact
that, according his argument, that many other systems in the company
are running under Clipper.
Other sugestion where also made, like reducing  the number of fields
in the main table based on the idea that some fields are already
available in other tables. This recommendation which was already being
analised by the QC department has to do with the transfer time
(mainframe-micros) which is one of the bottlenecks. Our capacity today
is  around 2 Mb per hour of file transference. The tables todays have
145 Mb and will reach 365 Mb. Under this transference rate the time
for transfer the files is about 3 days considering work without
interruption i.e continuosly. 
We consider the sugestion for useof Clipper a complete backwash. Today
we are able to perform, circa 50 to 80 consults per day by user,
without any further programming knowledge, condition required for use
to sustain the application of Clipper.
The political component is obvious:
The head of the CQ department had, in the past strong professional
desagreements with the Planning Manager. A purchase of  US$ 2.500 in a
project of   US$ 250 millions is a joke. The time spent in internal
memorandum to discuss this  matter is costing as much as the purchase.
I would like to receive opinions and sugestions to technically close
this embarrassement.
I am even open for opinions in favour of Clipper although I don't
belive it is possible someone defend this position. Also I would like
opinions in the direction of  a more powerfull data-bank program if
Access really isn't appropriate for such huge application.
Please I would appreciate the comments of everybody who consider
themselves with the necessary expertise and I rather prefer to receive
it by direct e-mail, in order not to flood the NGs with subject
eventually not of common interest.

P.S
 I am sorry for sending the  article even for the Brazilian NGs in
english. I simple din't have time to write  it twice. Anyway, who is
at the Net must read in english.

Thank you
Mario 
mporto@iis.com.br
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil