A sample of comments from our HP3000 Friends ...
A lot has been said about the great support everyone gets from Adager. But what about the people who make up the Corporation? When I was in the HP Response Center and Database Expert Center, I spent many hours talking with René, Ken, and Patrick. I always found them to be very helpful and genuinely interested in the problem I brought to them.
Over the years, their dedication never wavered. And as time went by, I began to think of the people at Adager, not only as support partners, but also as friends. Friends are always there for you, and Adager was always there for me. Now that I have moved on, my current position does not require their assistance, so now I can truly think of them as old friends!
One cannot talk about Adager without also mentioning Alfredo Rego. Through the years he has maintained his warm and friendly manner, while not letting his success go to his head. Alfredo has kept his company focused and its support second to none. Alfredo truly understands the meaning of customer loyalty.
To ALL the people at Adager, thank you for taking care of all the databases in this century and I look forward to your continued success in the next century!
— Steve Patrick [Hewlett-Packard / Worldwide]
As I review the Friends page (Jan 5, 2011), my feelings are the same as they were in 2000, and before in 197x/8x. What more could one say that has not been said: Your support cannot be beat. That's one service that will never be replaced, whereas hardware and software change.
— Keven Miller [3kRanger.com / USA]
I am the engineer who has used Adager for 19 years on this site, Please could you pass on my most sincere thanks to everyone who has developed and maintained this product over the years — it has never failed me and always provided me the information I needed to keep things going. I was always particularly impressed by the installation routine. If memory serves me correctly, I think I only ever once called for support and this was handled with the appropriate professionalism.
Sadly we are decommissioning the HP3000. There have been three models on this site since 1989; Adager has been on them all and has contributed significantly towards the very impressive "uptime".
Thanks to you all,
John— John A Peddie, Principal Project Engineer [Rolls-Royce / Worldwide]
Hello René, I write to say Thank You and really appreciate so much your kind patience and assistance in guiding me thru the database checking and helping us to unlock the database which we thought is the database corruption. And many a times, I did received your email response, and it is great opportunity that we spoke on the phone to-day. Thank You so much once again.
— Eric Han and Singapore team: Hyun, Keum Yi; Mork, Jimmy; Tang, Anthony; Fathil, Syahabidden; Kim, Sung-Jun; Ryu, Min-Shick; Chandrashekar, NS; Karim, Abdul; Topacio, Bernard; Sarabia, Cookie; Shahid, Mohammod Chaudry; Krishnan, Santhana; Jin, Yan; Feng, Jack; Ho, Harry; Srinivasan, Sridhar; Park, Geon-Yeob; Chang, Tian Lim; Corpuz, Willy; Leung, Ben; Tang, Tom
[Levi Strauss / Worldwide]
Patrick, thanks so much for the explanation. As is often the case the answer is staring you in the face. It's finding it that is the problem!
Adager support, as usual, is fantastic. Till next time, best regards.
— Gary Stephens [Wincanton Group Limited / United Kingdom]
Thank you so much, René, for answering all of my questions. As always, I appreciate your help and expertise.
Again, many thanks,
— Vicky Tanner [PC Mall / USA]
René, No matter when I email you, you always seem to reply promptly. Do you get any sleep? It is about 4 PM here in Japan. What time is it there?
— Harry Lawrence [University of Maryland, University College / Asia]
Thank you very much for the activation key and procedures. It worked like a charm. You are as good now as you were in the early eighties when I purchased this package -- at that time I thought you walked on water and worked miracles all the time.
— Curtis Webb [Provo City School District / USA]
1st, I've been an HP3K'er, and a HUGE fan of your contribution for several decades...
2nd, and the reason for my reply, is to thank you for eloquently expressing a feeling I've have about many features of these Politically Correct times. Price is price, quality is quality, and shame on those who can't tell the difference!
Yours in MPE/iX,
— Al Karman [Independent Consultant / USA]
It's often been said that the HP3000's success and endurance can be largely attributed to its bundled DBMS, TurboIMAGE, and the astonishing level of expertise and advice shared by the HP3000 community at large.
Nowhere is this more evident than with Alfredo and the people at Adager, who, together with their excellent tools, consistently offer levels of support seldom encountered in the Information Technology industry.
— Neil Harvey [Neil Harvey & Associates (Pty) Ltd. / South Africa]
Alfredo,
I just wanted to add my $.02 worth regarding my good friends at Adager, and of course your wonderful product. Over the past many years as a loyal Adager customer — no, make that “ friend” instead of just “ customer” —, I have found that both the product and service are simply “ the best” . The efforts that you, René, Ken, Fred and Patrick show every day to the HP3000 community of users are beyond compare. I would also like to once again take this opportunity to congratulate you on receiving the HP3000 Contributor Award from Hewlett-Packard — Well Done!
— Frank Kelly [McKessonHBOC / USA]
René & Patrick,
Thanks for your help today and tonight with our database issue. Once again you show why ADAGER has the best product and the best support in the HP3000 market. You are not only knowledgeable, but fun to work with in the most stressful times.
Take care and say "hi" to Alfredo for me.
Warmest regards,
Frank
— Frank Kelly [Harvard Pilgrim Health Care / USA]
The chain in the database had been broken. If I run the Fix Chain of the Adager utility it becomes ok.
— Pushkar Pandey [Sultanate of Oman]
Patrick,
Thanks so much for your help. Thanks also for the conversation, it broke up the day nicely.
— Vinnie Curran [alfa CTP Systems / USA]
Alfredo,
Just maybe, we can turn this tide around where the word "legacy" is not such a bad thing after all.
Thanks again,
— John Hornberger [SPX Corporation / USA]
Thank you for the First-class-Service you give me!!
— Daniel Schaufelberger [AMAG Automobil- und Motoren AG / Switzerland]
Patrick,
We are deeply appreciative of you sending us the update. I have applied it already (I've always loved how straightforward Adager's processes are) and we are good to go.
Again, thank you very much!
— Jeffrey Elmer [Dairylea Cooperative / USA]
Patrick from Adager was able to help me offline.
— Larry A. Barnes [Coldwater Creek / USA]
Gentlemen,
Again you have pulled me out of a bad situation.
Once again, thank you -- your support is second to none.
— Jim Cobin [City of Tempe / USA]
Hi René,
Just wanted to say, thanks again. Your timely response and support was instrumental in helping Affinity meet critical targets and deadlines for our recent DR [Disaster Recovery] rehearsal.
— Thornton Booker [Affinity Health Plan / USA]
Greetings,
Adager software was successfully downloaded and installed on both CPUs.
Thank you for excellent software and support!
— Robert Yazhari [Evergreen International Aviation, Inc. / Worldwide]
Hi Patrick,
I have downloaded and installed Adager successfully. Thank you very much to get back to us today which is Saturday. That is very nice of you and Adager Corp.
— Toan Nguyen [Santa Clara County Office of Education / USA]
Installed. Works perfectly, as is your norm.
— Ren Roderick [Crane Electronics Group, Interpoint Corporation / USA]
A big thank you to Alfredo Rego and René Woc of Adager for a speedy and painless replacement of our current Image DB management tools. Twenty-four hours from first inquiry to installation of the tape. If René and I hadn't spent so much time gabbing about various things then he might have remembered that I could have down-loaded the software off their Internet site, but 24 hours delivery is still creditable performance by any standard.
This is a public expression of thanks to the folks at Adager, and in particular René Woc, who again provided incomparable service in an astonishingly brief period of time. Of all the things that I will miss about the HP3000, Adager and IMAGE produce the greatest sense of loss.
— James B. Byrne [Harte & Lyne Limited / Canada]
René, I cannot thank you enough for your help. You are so patient and thorough in explaining exactly what needs to be done and how to accomplish it. I wish all support people were as great to work with as you are.
— Carol Bento [Corona-Norco Unified School District / USA]
Date: Mon, 19 May 2008 14:57:12 +0000 Sender: HP-3000 Systems Discussion <HP3000-L@RAVEN.UTC.EDU> From: Wyell Grunwald Subject: Re: [HP3000-L] Recovering data from bad DB That is because, as many have stated in the past, the people at Adager are fantastic ! If you have a HP3000 without Adager, it is like a car with half inflated tires, you may be able to get somewhere, but it will be a whole lot more difficult and uncomfortable along the way ! Wyell Grunwald -------------- Original message -------------- From: "James D. Dunlap" > You're right, Brian, but that's what I did. Too tired to think straight, > too little system downtime to not catch it when I can (or so I thought at > 1AM). René Woc at Adager walked me through the necessary steps to fix via > Debug. (FW did the trick.) That was not only kind of him, but downright > gracious, considering that we don't have Adager (yet!). Thanks for all who > helped. > > James— Wyell Grunwald, James D. Dunlap [HP-3000 Systems Discussion Forum]
Please forgive my exuberance, but I cannot say enough good things about Adager and their support. We had a dataset with over 650,000 records, doing a chained read on a field ('name') where the chain could be over 10,000 items long — needless to say, a search took way too long.
What to do? I ran Robelle's HOWMESSY supplied by Adager, sent the report to their support team, and within hours had an informative message back with advice on how to fix this (repack the set, change primary key).
The process took about 20 minutes, and now it's lightning fast!
Thank you, Patrick and the rest of the Adager staff. Can't imagine being on the 3000 with TurboImage, and not having this product.
— Connie Sellitto [Cat Fanciers' Association / USA]
In the Airline world today every new startup looks to emulate Southwest Airlines. In the software support world we wish to emulate Adager!
— David Evans [Open Skies / Worldwide]
The professionals at Adager have bailed us out on more than one occasion. They have a great product, but the professional service that they provide is unlike any other in the industry.
— Jim Bandy [Southwest Airlines Co. / USA]
All done. Everything went as instructed. Great job.
— Sam Hansen [Merrill Lynch/Howard Johnson / Worldwide]
I wanted to express my appreciation for René at ADAGER for his help early Saturday morning [and Sunday night] with my broken IMAGE data base. His knowledge and expertise helped me find the problem quickly and he knew the solution immediately. I appreciate the weekend help.
— Kent Wallace [Primary Health of Boise / USA]
Have you asked the fine folks at Adager for their advice?
— Chris Goodey [EggHead Software / Worldwide]
Of course the Adager Website has lots of papers on this very subject.
— Tony Summers [Smith & Williamson / United Kingdom]
I then spoke to René Woc of Adager, as I often do when I'm stumped as to what to do next, and René had a particularly good idea.
— Wirt Atmar [AICS Research / USA]
I would first like to thank everyone who responded to my plea so quickly. Patrick from Adager walked me through the process of removing the output defer flag and checking the integrity of the database.
— Jeff Keepers [3M / Worldwide]
We all hear stories about how Adager (or the folks at Adager) help with a disaster.
Fortunately, in all my years on IMAGE, I have only used Adager to manage or develop IMAGE databases. That's right, develop. I cannot remember the last time I ran the HP DBSCHEMA utility. Adager provides an easy interface to make database changes and it checks for errors at the same time.
You can tell that the folks at Adager are real developers. They only have one labor of love and that product is Adager. They live and breath IMAGE day and night. It is no surprise they are heavily involved in the direction of IMAGE by their participation in Special Interest Groups and other forums.
While the idea of “ open” programming is just getting around to the mainstream, the people at Adager have always been available to share their knowledge with those who want to know more about the legendary IMAGE database system.
— Mark Wonsil [4M Enterprises, Inc. / USA]
René and Patrick have saved my a** on several occasions.
— John Stephens [First Health / USA]
#ifndef Adager
printf (“ visit http://www.adager.com\n” );
printf (“ call +1 (208) 726-9100\n” );
#endif
adager = support && reliability && power;— Stan Sieler [Allegro Consultants / USA]
Patrick, I believe that you now hold the unofficial Patrick Cusick World Record for the speed with which you got back to me. For that, I thank you very much.
— Pat Cusick [New Century Direct / USA]
Adager and The Adager Way have taught me two things. Years ago, as CIO at Cargill Europe, I learnt what Software Reliability means when day after day I counted on Adager to reshape my database structures as my applications evolved. Then, when I became a software developer, I learnt what true Customer Service means when Adager helped some of our customers recover from the terrible fate of broken chains.
— Michel Kohon [REVEAL Solutions Group / USA]
Former President, HP3000 Users Group of France
Yes, it was the firmware that finally fixed it (hopefully)... The 989... is fast enough to overflow system tables...
By any chance were you running Adager and creating/expanding a large database? Adager itself isn't the problem, but thanks to its being so wonderfully written, it has a habit of exposing a nice little flaw [in the operating system]. I don't know if this is the problem or not, but on the faster CPU systems, it is possible to overflow some system tables and thus cause a system abort. We used to do it with Adager at will. Adager ended up modifying their software so as to force memory flushes until HP provided a fix.
NOTE: If you are running Adager on a 989 make sure you are on the latest Adager release. The fine folks at Adager were nice enough to put additional code in their product to make sure that it doesn't trigger this system table overflow.
— Gary L. Paveza, Jr. [American International Group, Inc. (AIG) / USA]
I got to know Alfredo while planning a whirlwind five-city Eastern speaking tour for him. He owned a Merlin III aircraft at the time, which made it possible to hit Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Boston and New York in four days — and still have time to sit down and play the piano.
Alfredo and his staff were the easiest, most pleasant crew I've ever worked with, always willing to help. As usual, he played to SRO crowds in every city. My only request was to fly as copilot, which Alfredo granted me on the Cleveland / Columbus / Cincinnati legs. What a thrill!
We did a sequel of that tour, as the Interex Roadshow, with the same great results. I'm looking forward to our next tour!
— Jim Weiss [Fioravanti-Redwood International / Worldwide]
Chair, Interex User Group Support Committee
Patrick: It's not often enough in life we remember to say THANKS, but this is not one of them --- THANKS for your help and info.
On 10/05 10/06 we did a REBLOCK DATABASE on our “ Amisys” application database HEALTH.ARCHIVE from 1516 to 2560; and we also worked in REBLOCK DATASET, which saved us some 18.7 million sectors. Exec time better than I expected!
We very much appreciate your educating us!
— Paul Wood, Joe Taylor, Anju Patel [BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee / USA]
To go along with René, let's not forget about Patrick and the rest too! In fact Patrick help me on Friday solve a really bad performance issue with one of my databases! So thanks to you too, Patrick!
— James R. Reynolds [Time-Life / USA]
I have been a user and a firm believer in Adager for close to 30 years. This last weekend I was amazed at the support that I received from Adager staff. I had not arranged the renewal of our support for a further 12 months and this was going to expire on Tuesday the 31st October. This did not give us enough time to get the Tape in time and I needed to use Adager to do a disk to disk database copy on the 1st as soon at the clock started for the new month.
I sent off an email to René at 09:00 Sunday Australian time which was 16:00 Saturday across there. I was amazed that someone was there and not only supplied a number of options but was more than helpful for a problem that was not of their doing, but was entirely our fault.
I have since installed the file supplied by René via the Internet and tested and all is in perfect working order.
Adager is the benchmark that all support organizations should try to achieve.
— Shane McGrath [Alcoa of Australia Limited]
Many thanks to Patrick Mullen at Adager for helping me diagnose the problem.
— Curt Cappell [Jacksonville University]
René: As usual, your insight was right on the mark and our HP SE has made a change and I am past the error. Thanks for your prompt and always pleasurable service.
— Tom Williams [University of Pittsburgh Medical Center / USA]
How rewarding it must be to you that so many of us have been at least as loyal to Adager (and you and your wonderful team) as we have been to the 3K for all of these years!
25+ years of simply, efficiently getting the job done right the first time, every time! Here's to at least 25 more!
— Carol A. Darnell [Hertz Rent A Car / Worldwide]
Thanks again Patrick. As I mentioned, your knowledge and experience are legendary, surpassed only by your exceptional support. Interestingly enough, I actually figured this one out and had the indexes rebuilt about an hour after sending my question. Still, there is great confidence in having you available and so willing to help. Thanks BUNCHES.
Wow, the customer service at Adager is beyond legendary, but this has to be a new standard. Left the voice mail and then had a couple of quick tasks . . . And then here you are double checking to find out how to help. AWESOME.
— Eddie Hopper [The Regence Group / USA]
Last year we upgraded our HP3000 980-400 to a 997-300. The increase in performance was amazing and my company was pleased with the investment.
This pleasure was not to last for long. Due to a broken connector on a buffer board our IMAGE databases became corrupted. With very large jumbo datasets the prospect of locating the errors, let alone repairing them, was not likely to happen in a short period of time.
Adager not only worked with HP and us to help determine the cause of the issue, they stayed with us during the repairs many times to correct errors: broken chains, orphans, etc. The database repairs were completed in a remarkably short period of time and our users felt a minimum of inconvenience. Most of all, no data was lost!
My thanks to you and your staff, Alfredo, for a job well done.
— Dean Worden [Scott & White Health Plan / USA]
Adager is a legendary name in the HP3000 world — legendary for its utility, quality, support, and of course for Alfredo! A truly indispensable product.
— Eugene Volokh [VESOFT / Worldwide]
Gary T. Schwartz Professor of Law, UCLA / Founder and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy
It's been a pleasure working with you guys. I would say Adager is at the very top of my list of vendors that I have dealt with over a 35 years computer career. Keep the e3000 alive!
— Allan Chalmers [Sierra Club / USA]
I couldn't agree more! I am convinced that Mr. Woc doesn't sleep. In my 25 years plus of knowing René, I have called him dozens of times between 12:00am and 3:am and always under the worst circumstances. He never fails to answer before three rings and always has the right answer. Furthermore, and this is the important part, I have never known Adager to lose data! Great Job Adager! (And IMAGE).
Do you have Adager? If not, why not?
— Craig Lalley [Smurfit-Stone Container Corporation / USA]
Fortunately for us, Adager makes doing this sort of housekeeping relatively painless and trivial.
— James B. Byrne [Harte & Lyne Limited / Canada]
Words cannot begin to express the amount of gratitude we have for the Adager product and people supporting it.
Recently a database was corrupted when a fiber channel port failed on our disk array. René and Patrick were most willing and cheerful, offering to help fix several different problems any time of day or night. The Adager product was able to examine the database every which way to Tuesday, and provided all of the information needed to repair it. René and Patrick provided the know-how to fix the database.
In my 25+ years on the HP 3000 system I have found a few software vendors that always give so much more than they take, while others always seem to be asking for lots more money. Adager, Robelle, and Vesoft (and others) have always provided so much for a very reasonable price. It seems their main goal is helping the HP 3000 community. Their articles, newsletters, willingness to explain things when calling for support, etc. are an invaluable source of information for many HP 3000 shops. On the other hand there are a few other HP 3000 software vendors that are always wanting tens of thousands of dollars (if not hundreds of thousands) every time you turn around. Their main goal seems to be how much money they can accumulate.
Thank you René, Patrick and the entire Adager crew and product.
— Ron Miller [Amerigroup Corporation / USA]
Thanks to all who responded, and especially to René at Adager who kindly got me through recovering the database late at night. The guys at Adager have always been very knowledgeable and very helpful.
— Mark Sprowls [Quadax / USA]
Dear René: Jim and I want to thank you again for your patience and your help both late on Friday night and on Monday morning when we called you again. On Friday you explained to us what we were seeing in the Adager “ examine chains” and on Jim's screen in the process of trying to fix those bad paths. You also told us that the amount of errors we were seeing and the severity were not a “ normal” type of phenomenon of possibly past system problems. On Monday you also walked us through finding the “ duplicates” in the Manual Master.
Since we had never experienced these kinds of disc failures before, and had never done “ examines” on “ healthy” data bases, we needed your expertise to work us through all the abnormalities we were seeing.
So, this note is to thank you for your very generous and patient help and to tell you the outcome of our data base problems. All the errors we were seeing in Adager's examine paths process appear to have been caused by the bad Disk Array hardware. This was proved by taking one data base from the back-up files and restoring it to our development server that does not use the disk arrays, and the path errors were not found. We are now on our third full restore with the belief that the hardware repairs this third time are good. We will know for certain around 4:00 today.
It was so pleasant to find someone who was actually eager to help us and who was so knowledgeable that we had to write to you and thank you.
— Cheri Day and Jim Sanders [Lockheed Martin Corporation / Worldwide]
Wow! That's what I call great support. I think it only took 17 minutes for your excellent response. You ARE amazing!
— Ken Cottrell [Trinity Health / USA]
René Woc: I extend HMSHost's appreciation to you, and other Adager personnel, for past assistance relative to HMSHost's support need of the Model 2 licenses. The Adager product and your support of same was an integral component to ensuring the success of our project to restructure the application databases of 35 operational business around the country, and completed in total yesterday.
— Russ Bielich [HMSHost, formerly known as Host Marriott Services / Worldwide]
I would like to thank you for your outstanding customer service during our nearly 15 year relationship.
— Mark Deputy [Montgomery County Government / USA]
Do you ever sleep? !!!!
— Frank Nikoletti [Argyle Diamonds / Australia]
Adager.com is always a place I go whenever I need technical research material on IMAGE or databases in general!
— Art Bahrs [The Regence Group / USA]
Outstanding! Thanks, René! You folks continue to set the standard for First Class Support! Keep up the great work!
— Dan Barnes [3M / Worldwide]
Let me take this opportunity to say thank you for the excellence of your customer service. It's my opinion that both the admin and tech support of Adager are the best in the world, bar none.
— Carol Lowe [Computrol / USA]
Adager is the most reliable and simple software package I have ever had the privilege of using. Thanks to those who create and maintain the software.
— Brian W. Hiller [Telsmith / USA]
Everything goes well (as usual). You still are number 1 for the services.
— Paul Landry [Softvoyage / Canada]
Thanks for your help. I've dealt with Adager for about 20 years and the support is 100% solid as always.
— Tommy Martin [ISP Elastomers / Worldwide]
The fact that we have been using Adager for more than two decades is in itself testimony to how reliable and productive this product has been, is, and no doubt will continue to be, for as long as we use IMAGE databases.
While running Adager I cannot help but feel, due to its terrific interactivity and online assistance, that the full power of Adager support comes to life there and then. What more can you ask of a product?
— Paddy Cooke [Cablelink Limited / Ireland]
In hindsight Adager has been the single most important, productive and robust software tool of the very many I have bought in my 30 years in the IT industry. It has been in use for more than 25 years and I understand from my former company that the first bug has still not shown up. In the very rare occasions where we needed support, it was excellent.
— Joachim Geffken [former CEO, SEITZ Group, Germany]
Former Director of the Board, International HP3000 Users Group
Thank you very much Patrick. If every company could be as quick and precise in their responses as you guys, working in the IT field would be a beautiful thing.
— Nicolas Hebert [Positron Public Safety Systems / Canada and Worldwide]
I would like to tell my most recent consultant story with Adager. My client at the time, a large health organization, had lost over 2,000,000 entries in their Pricing dataset due to an employee's unsupervised use of SUPRTOOL.
On the day this was discovered, many weeks after the deed was done, I called Adager and René helped us restore the dataset from a previous backup, work the Adager magic on it, and get the problem resolved that same night.
This type of support, always friendly and unhurried, is what makes Adager so special. Thank you, guys!
— Rafael Andrade [The SoftWorks, Inc. / USA]
René and Patrick, thanks a lot for all of your help this morning. Everything seems fine now.
— Carol Arnold [3M / Worldwide]
Thank you Patrick. You guys are fantastic. If only all support was like yours.
— Bill Matthews [Southwest Airlines / USA]
René Thank you, René. As has been always the case over the years, your suggestion worked beautifully. Thank you for your time and for always being there.
— Chip Dorman [Kennametal / Worldwide]
Thanks so much for all of the assistance today. You guys are the BEST (in the Global (as in Whole Earth) sense) in the business!
— Donald Donigan [Bell Gas / USA]
Yea, it's funny how I always bring a “ learning experience” with me every time I call you guys! Guess I just have a knack for doing weird things that no one has thought of before. If should be in software development testing, not manufacturing! I think I missed my calling... ;)
Thanks again for all you do. You guys are awesome!
— Kathy Parker [Sumitomo Electric Lightwave / Worldwide]
Hello René, I was able to d/l and install adager without any problems at all. Thanks for the excellent service and detailed instructions. Folks like you really make it difficult for folks like me to have to plan to leave the HP3000 (although I plan on delaying the inevitable for as long as possible).
— Eben Yong [Health Plan of San Mateo / USA]
In this make-a-buck world where getting it done quickly is so often put ahead of getting it done right, Adager has refused to join the mad race to oblivion.
Adager the tool proceeds with “ deliberate speed,” leaving orderliness and good health in its wake.
The people of Adager are gracious and trustworthy. Before they had any reason to view me as a means of income, they took the time to answer my questions and even while I was still deciding if I would become a customer, they accepted, nay, encouraged enhancement requests. I cannot express how much it means to me that they were willing to spend time listening to my ideas and sharing with me their extensive knowledge and wisdom. I am honored to consider myself a “ friend of Adager.”
[Regarding HP World in Philadelphia, back in 2000] I spent an hour plus at the Adager booth putting together a Tensegritoy model. The booth is, as the Adager booth seems always to be, an island of peace in a sea of chaos (a lot like IMAGE and the HP3000 in the workplace :-). The theme is Tension and Compression and how complex structures can be built out of those two simple ideas.
— Ted Ashton [Southern Adventist University / USA]
WOW, were to start? I have been using the HP3000 platform since 1982. I consider Adager to be one of the REQUIRED tools to effectively manage my IMAGE databases. I have always found the product to be rock solid and the support to be beyond belief. I can actually pick up the phone and talk directly with the people, such as Alfredo, René, and Patrick, who know, create, and maintain the product Adager.
— Jonathan M. Backus [Tech Group University / USA]
As for the comments? Wonderful idea that shows both the abilities and support of the Adager software and Employees (who are great!) but also shows the variety of sites and industries that are using the HP3000 and Adager (this is useful when a person is searching for info on a product).
As for my comments? I still remember when René helped me out with a database problem back in early 1992. OmniDisc was unable to read our databases and their keys. When I contacted Adager for help, René walked me thorough fixing the databases so that I could re-install OmniDisc and re-index my databases.
While this may not seem unusual at first, you have to realize that OmniDisc is not an Adager product, that it was 22:00 hours Pacific Time on a Friday, and that the site (I had started there less than 3 weeks before!) had not paid Adager maintenance for some time :(
But I was helped nevertheless.
I paid the maintenance agreement the next Monday, hand walking the check thorough the various people needed for signatures!!!
Good luck Alfredo. I will always push your product above all others, if for no other reason than someone there helped make me (a brand new IS manager) look like a “ Scotty” (see Star Trek for meaning) one late weekend long ago :)
Art “ Gladly not in charge anymore :) hehe” Bahrs
— Art Bahrs [Denkor / USA]
Nick Demos wrote: “ The other question is `Where do you find a champion with all the skills listed above?'”
Oh, finding one is easy. The *hard* part will be convincing Alfredo to give up Adager and become a “ public servant” .
— Steve Ellis [Wetmore & Company, an RR Donnelley company / USA]
We encountered a very subtle bug in TurboImage that manifested itself with FSERR 93 (Security Violation) when accessing various datasets in four data bases.
We called both Adager and the HP Response Center, both of whom came through in flying colors in helping us to fix the problem and in understanding what caused it.
At 10:00 AM, my manager asked me to prepare the standard Root Cause Analysis Report and I had no idea what to write. Three hours later, I was able to write the report with knowledge and confidence.
Thanks to the folks at Adager and at the HPRC and TurboImage Lab.
...
Dave Knispel of Frequency Marketing wrote, “ I got my call from the Response Center. I found out that there is a bug in IMAGE with Jumbo details and version C.7.21 or earlier and online backups. If the root file and the chunk files have different timestamps and they are restored, IMAGE will not open the files. HP was able to fix the problem by turning off the checking of timestamps. This problem is fixed with MPEiX 6.0 and Power patch 2.”
If you have Adager, their consistency check will fix this problem. We had it frequently when we copied data bases to other systems.
— Leonard S. Berkowitz [Perot Health Care Systems
(Harvard Pilgrim Health Care account) / USA]
Demonstrations of your level of customer support are very rare and should be celebrated.
— Mitchell Bober [Church Hospital / USA]
We always enjoy dealing with the professionals at Adager.
— Sherry Boeckelmann and Anna Ross [Coca-Cola Bottling Company / Worldwide]
The Adager support is really OK, they helped me a lot to rebuild a Production Database that crashed! It was a nice experience for me... and the end-users were also really happy. Cheers.
— Xavier Boschian [CLT-UFA SA / Luxembourg]
I've never worked with a group that was so competent and ready to help out. The folks at Adager have taught me a huge amount about Image database problems and fixes. And the Adager tool makes it all pretty painless.
— Laveta Bowen [Merrill Lynch/Howard Johnson / Worldwide]
As a user of the HP3000 since 1976, I can tell you that Adager is the de facto standard both for support and as THE IMAGE utility.
(On a message to the HP3000-L discussion list, Bill wrote: Of course we can't forget IMAGE — a DBMS so reliable that if you did have a bug you assumed that it was in your application program.)
— Bill Brandt [William Brandt & Company / USA]
I've used Adager, the product, for nearly 25 years at several different job stops. I'll never forget explaining back in 1980 why I absolutely had to have a software product from a company in Guatemala. But that was many years ago. And this is today.
“ I've used Adager for nearly 25 years” actually says it all. I had choices, but I stayed with Adager. No product is better. Even more importantly, Adager, the company and people, have set an example of customer and technical support that is absolutely unrivaled. While I do not wish problems on anyone, it is only when you do have that problem at 5:00 AM on a Sunday that you discover how good the support from Adager really is and can appreciate the unique relationship Adager has with its customers.
— John Burke [Pacific Coast Building Products / USA]
We have been a user of Adager for more than 20 years. I've lost count of the number of times it has got us out of a tight spot — capacity management, performance advice and improvements, fixing broken chains; and more recently, very easy and efficient transformation of 2 and 6 byte date fields to Y2K compliance (even if they were imbedded in compound fields not otherwise described in the database root file).
And in all those years, we have needed support no more than half a dozen times; it was always very quickly and effectively provided. It's a brilliant product that no HP3000 shop can afford to be without.
— Ron Burnett [Women's & Children's Healthcare Network / Australia]
Thank you René, everything worked great. It is not often that you see responsive customer support like yours.
— Bruce Church [Trans Union of Canada Data Center, Inc. / Canada]
Adager continues to astound me and break performance expectations. During a recent migration to one of two 989/650s, I needed to minimize my customer downtime. Adager overnighted their latest version to me. I was expecting some enhancements, but what actually happened exceeded my expectations.
In modifying an extremely large Orders database with 15 masters, each over 4.5 million records, the new version only took 74 minutes wall time and 2993 CPU seconds. Previously, this was the amount of time required to change 1 set. My comment to Adager was WOW.
Subsequently, I had the chance to benchmark the older version on the second 989/650. Expanding the same database took 153 minutes wall time and 7755 CPU seconds. The new version is incredible. Thank you Adager. Once again, the Adager team provides the HP3000 community the tools to succeed.
... All one has to do is look at the “ Who's Who” in Adager's page of what their customers say to get an understanding of what service, dedication, and a great product Alfredo, Fred, René, Patrick, and Ken Paul brought to the HP3000. I too have been assisted by this great team. And many times they have saved my data when I thought all was lost.
— Chuck Ciesinski [Hughes Network Systems / USA]
I'm a system manager with Agilent Technologies and recently requested help from your support team.
I'd like to extend my thanks to René Woc. His assistance, patience, and willingness to help us out while we had database issues prevented an escalation with our business partners.
I do not deal with databases, but René did not let that stop us from getting the job done. His patience on walking me through what needed to be done, explaining as he went, and allowing me time to document what we were doing was incredible. Because of his help, we have now gotten documentation/processes written up to distribute to our business partners.
We had a call open to the HP RCS for several days and they were unable to assist us. With one phone call, René fixed our problem and our end users were able to continue with their processing.
Thanks again!
— Annette Comes [Agilent Technologies / Worldwide]
Adager the product, and Adager the company, are what every software company should strive for in terms of quality, reliability, and support. [I have been an] Adager user for 16 years.
— Lou Cook [Northwest Textbook Depository / USA]
“ Are you sure you want to abort all this work now? You could use your AM capability and remove the file-space limit of this group...”
When I first received the above messages (not verbatim) some 16+ years ago, when I was experimenting with Adager, I knew that I had found an excellent piece of software. It turned out to be correct and have since enjoyed using it to face the challenges of broken chains, capacity changes, database restructuring, jumbo datasets, and most recently Y2K remediation. Add to that a support staff that seems to never sleep and you have a superb package, one that lets me get many hours of peaceful sleep.
— Paul H. Christidis [Raytheon Systems Company / USA]
Re: Adager Therapy Function.
Alfredo, I wanted to let you know that we just performed a “ COPYOVER” and there was a Jumbo Chunk problem that Adager resolved. Please see full report below.
Thanks,
— Bryan Crowley [Harvard Pilgrim Health Care / USA]
By the way... I do want to thank your team... especially Patrick and Ken for their recent support. We had a power outage that disconnected our XP256 from the HPe3000, causing (another) crash. This crash caused some database corruption that required expert help. Both Ken and Patrick put in long hours with me to resolve the corruption, and I want you to know that these two individuals are most worthy of praise! I have *always* been able to count on Adager support, and this was no exception! THANK YOU and your team for setting up this most outstanding company! You can quote me on that!
— Randall Davis [KBkids.com / USA]
At a time when so many companies are willing to brag about what they do NOT have, it always surprises me that HP is unwilling to brag (or uncomfortable bragging) about what they do have. If HP were to make it clear that the 3000 is a great platform, they'd sell a million of them.
— Frank Gribbin [Potter Anderson & Corroon / USA]
Alfredo Rego and the rest of the Adager team have unstintingly given their support to the HP3000 community even when the person requesting help was not a customer. It is refreshing to see this happening in a world that seems to demand payment for even the most minor services.
— Nick Demos [Performance Software Group / USA]
The team at Adager has been wonderful, with so many people to thank. Ken Paul, for example, has helped many AMISYS clients no matter what time of day. Maybe we should not publish this, but I can remember a special time when a “ 24 by 7” client called me on my vacation while I was in Las Vegas. Their database was a mess. Broken chains, missing headers,... Ken helped them over the course of two full days. He is endless energy when it comes to great customer service. Fred, Patrick, René, and who can leave out Alfredo himself. What a team. Keep up the great work. I always recommend Adager.
— Joe Dolliver [e3k Solutions, Inc. / USA]
Adager has always been known throughout the HP3000 community for the quality and reliability of the software and the dedication and commitment of the support team. As a matter of fact, Adager was one of the first products I bought and installed on a series III back in 1980.
During my 20 years working on HP3000s, I have never come across any problems caused by Adager — quite the contrary.
— John Dunlop [Data Analysts Ltd. / UK]
I'm working with a customer right now experiencing a poor read hit percentage but having plenty of memory. Their issue is data locality (either through database performance problems [fixable with Adager] or disk fragmentation [fixable with De-Frag/X]).
— Bill Lancaster [Lund Performance Solutions / Worldwide]
With Adager, I don't have to worry about our databases. Broken chains, full datasets, adding or expanding items, whatever — it's never a problem!
And if I have a question? Help's right there —built into the program —easy to understand and complete. Adager helps make my life easy!
— Tim Ericson [DenKor Dental Management / USA]
Thank you for your excellent support. I've always known that Adager Support was top notch, with great response-time. However you've out-done yourself responding before I've even called. Awesome job.
— Michael Anderson [Spring Independent School District / USA]
It is with great pleasure that I commend Adager and especially Alfredo Rego. Way back in the late 70s we were building a system to handle Cablevision billing and customer service in Vancouver. We had selected HP for the hardware, operating system and database software. We very quickly found out that, while the IMAGE Database Management System was very strong, it was going to take days—if not weeks—to modify our database.
We were handling 50 users on a 512k HP3000 Series III machine with around 500,000 accounts and addresses. That was a record in the industry. Even more challenging (in those early days before the Internet), over half of our users accessed the HP3000 remotely via telephone links from various locations.
Alfredo came to Vancouver from Guatemala for a short visit to see us. He stayed 6 months and finished the earliest commercial version of Adager.
Unlike most software, Adager does exactly what it is supposed to do. Quickly, quietly and accurately. Without Adager, our application would not have worked.
I compliment Alfredo and Adager.
— Greg Fleck [ServiceWorks Distribution / Canada]
Former MIS manager for Premier/Rogers Communications in Vancouver
The response I received concerning my REX problems was tremendous! I followed the directions of René Woc at Adager and sure enough the errors in the OS appeared on my system. I have sent all the information to Summit, as we receive the patches from them instead of HP. Summit is contacting HP to see what to do to fix the problem.
Thank you for your help. I was feeling very desperate and at a loss of what to do. I had spent the entire week, last week, trying to solve this problem and I was ready to pull out all my hair — not a pretty sight!
— Susan Gatewood [Newport News Shipbuilding Employees' Credit Union / USA]
Alfredo and his people have been a very powerful influence on my life. People learn from examples, and the Adager crew have been a great example. The commitment they have to the HP3000 community surpasses that community. I am privileged to have been exposed to your continuing care and example, changing the world a little at a time.
— Chris the Geek (Chris Gauthier) [3kWorld / USA]
Adager has always been my favorite tool for IMAGE. Reasonable price, easy to use, outstanding product, excellent quality assistance. You can't go wrong.
— Joe Andress [USA]
Sometimes, we are putting in all kinds of time, such as all-night /all-day sessions. But there comes a point when, by doing this, we become dangerous to ourselves, our code and our databases.
This happened last night. After 48 hours or so, with about an hour's sleep, I should have seen the signs and gone home. Nope — had to press on.
We pilots like to call it “ GetThereItis” — we know not to succumb to it, but we do anyway.
What any pilot in trouble does is to ASK FOR HELP from the closest tower. I shot an email off to Adager (it's after midnight here, after 10 PM there, on a Friday night). I figured I'd hear from someone this morning. (I'm not that naive to think that Adager folks actually take R&R on weekends <g>)
This morning, after 7.5 hours of restful and much needed sleep, I found several messages from René, one from Alfredo. René's first message was timestamped about 15 minutes after I sent my message! (I guess I should have stayed up :)
Thanks René, and the whole Adager team. The support team comes through again, even when we make stupid mistakes, and at the oddest of hours. As always, there was not even a mention of whose fault it was.
— Joe Geiser [BizNetTech.net / USA]
Many vendors try and pawn problems off, saying it is a problem with someone else's software. In dealing with Adager support, I have found the exact opposite to be true. They have assisted me and helped to correct problems that, in the end, were not even related to their software. All this being done at 3:00 AM without a single word about me and my system being an inconvenience to them. Thanks Adager, for having the best support staff I have ever dealt with!
— Chad Gilles [American United Life Insurance Co. / USA]
I've been an Adager user and fan since 1981. It's a fantastic product, but even better is the support that Alfredo and his team provide.
They are the “ IMAGE EXPERTS” .
I used to be the Tech Support Manager at Robelle where we prided ourselves on helping users. Whenever there was an IMAGE problem we couldn't solve, our first suggestion was to give the guys at Adager a call.
— Paul Gobes [WestJet Airlines / Canada]
I think your product is wonderful. I have been using Adager for 16 years, and it has consistently been very solid. We have very huge databases at our facility, and there have been a number of times that we have stretched Adager to the limits, and every time I have been pleased at the results. When there are problems, which are few, the Adager support people are right there to help, often spending large amounts of time to make sure everything is correct and stable. Adager has saved me from restore times of 4 hours per database by being able to fix specific root file problems without a total restore. A fantastic product that all HP3000 shops should have.
Adager is and always has been extremely excellent at support at any hour of the day or night! Customer service is truly #1.
— Wyell Grunwald [Geisinger Health Systems / USA]
During the many years I've had the pleasure of using and managing HP3000 platforms, Adager has been a critical piece of our system management toolset.
Why?
Several weekends' work saved from failure because Adager technical expertise was available — not only for Adager-related issues but for obscure IMAGE database problems, as well;
Using Adager for database structural changes is simplicity defined;
Adager's relatively low total cost of ownership;
Adager's staff and product have almost single-handedly refined and defined customer service and product excellence for the software industry. No better example exists - anywhere.
— Lee Gunter [The Regence Group / USA]
Adager offers a unique combination of an outstanding product with outstanding support. I remember the “ old days” when increasing the capacity of a dataset meant a DBUNLOAD followed by a DBLOAD. Adager has changed that task from an overnight job (when we were lucky!) to a job that requires just a few minutes.
Furthermore, the members of the Adager staff are always ready to help with any database problem. There has never been a time that they weren't willing to offer any help they could.
Adager, the product and its staff, is a resource that makes managing an HP3000 even easier!
— Steve Hammond [Association of American Medical Colleges / USA]
It is a pleasure to find a company willing to help regardless of client affiliations.
— Dan Holeva [Tyler Memorial Hospital / USA]
I know and greatly appreciate the fact that when we upgrade our HP processor you do not use it as an opportunity to increase your charges to us.
— Steven R. Johannessen [Kid Duds / USA]
Adager is unquestionably the best and most indispensable tool I have used in my 13 years of database administration. Moreover, the staff are the most knowledgeable, professional, friendly, and accommodating people I have ever had the pleasure to work with.
I particularly appreciated the staff's willingness to customize Adager to meet our Y2K conversion needs. Thanks to Adager, our Y2K database conversion was a breeze. Thanks for a superb product and outstanding service. Keep up the good work!
— Carol Kern [HP3000 Consultant / USA]
The software worked just as advertised.
— Alan Kirkpatrick [Hydro Mississauga / Canada]
This message is for Patrick. I phoned you earlier today for assistance regarding a corrupt database.
Thanks very much for your help. With your aid I was able to patch up the database problem and allow my customer, Carter Holt Harvey Packaging, to get back onto their system.
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and thanks again.
— Tony Knowles [Hewlett-Packard (NZ) Limited]
Sometimes a customer of mine suffers what appears to be a catastrophe. This was one of those times. Users were calling to report “ an IMAGE error” when they tried to run an application. A quick check showed that the database root file was missing and other problems were quickly mounting. The database wasn't on any of the existing backup tapes. There were no readable DBSTORE tapes. The source data contained in the database was no longer available. The database was on an old “ Classic” system. And worse yet, the customer didn't have Adager.
Less than 20 minutes after posting a message to the HP3000-L Internet discussion list, René Woc of Adager responded with his phone number and an offer of help. Within minutes René had (over the phone) walked me through a procedure which replaced the missing root file and made the database completely accessible without the loss of a single byte of data. Once again, Adager had come through — even for an organization which was not a customer of theirs!
The quality, feature set, ease-of-use, and over-all usefulness of the Adager software is well known and more than top-notch, but then so is their staff. I've used Adager at various customer sites for almost twenty years and I have always found the Adager staff to be helpful, friendly, courteous, and very knowledgeable. In summary, the Adager Corporation exemplifies the goal all software companies strive for. Well done, René. Well done, Alfredo. Well done, Adager.
— John Korb [Innovative Software Solutions, Inc. / USA]
The Adager staff members, a very knowledgeable group, have always been of service to their customers and in spreading information about the latest and greatest in computing, especially about IMAGE, MPE, and the HP3000. At almost any conference on HP-related subjects, Adager staff is present to help users and provide a vision into the future on what is about to happen in the industry.
Adager members, F. Alfredo Rego, Fred White, René Woc, Ken Paul, etc., have given presentations at numerous events — Interex conferences, regional users groups, other big conferences — sharing their expertise with the computer community, where they are well respected.
When I needed the history of the HP3000, René supplied it with amazing speed and it was an excellent document.
When you need help, don't call the Lone Ranger or Superman, contact Adager and someone there will be of assistance. It's a great group of guys and gals.
— Dick Kranz [Interex Writer, Retired / Worldwide]
It was truly delightful to find someone so willing to help a customer even though it was an inconvenience to them, especially at 2:00 in the morning.
— Jerry Krieg [BP Oil / Worldwide]
“ Call us anytime you have a database problem, regardless of whose database utility software you own — we will be glad to help.”
These words stuck in my mind after attending one of your sessions at HPWorld. Little did I know that I would be taking you up on your offer. After several unsuccessful attempts to repair a broken chain in our database with another utility, I finally called Adager for help. Not once did Adager ask for anything in return. The Adager engineer I was working with overnighted your products to me and the next day we had the broken chain fixed.
We kept experiencing these broken chains and the Adager engineer was eventually able to figure out that we had a disk drive that was going bad. The drive would occasionally flip a bit, thereby causing the broken chain. The disk drive was replaced and we haven't had a problem since.
The support was INCREDIBLE! And for a non-customer, I couldn't believe it. I don't even get this type of support on other products that I pay support for. Needless to say, I dropped the other vendor immediately and have been an Adager customer ever since, and plan on being one for a long time to come.
— Ed Kruczek [Rodale, Inc. / USA]
Thank you René. We have no longer experienced the problems.
HP called us back later and confirmed that this is indeed the fix.
— Paul Laferriere [Harvard Pilgrim Health Care / USA]
I ask that I be allowed to be a `friend' of the `friends' of Adager. I have used Adager since ~1982 (can't remember the exact date) and it has saved my skin, and lots of time and trouble, over and over.
The product, the people, the service, the passion, the quality, the integrity... are above and beyond anyone's expectations.
The product/service for the HP3000 is impeccable and synonymous.
— Tom Lang [Lang Consulting, Inc. / USA]
I have worked with Adager and MPE for over ten years, and in my mind, the two are inseparable. There are very few (five or so, I would say) *required* HP3000 applications — and Adager is one of them.
Code-wise, it is a masterpiece — worthy of classroom emulation on What Code Should Look Like, and What A Good User-Interface Is. It offers constant contextual assistance, and always defaults to the “ safest” choice. Above all, it *always* tells you precisely what it is doing with your precious data, why it is doing so, and makes suggestions or gives warnings regarding the activities it is performing or what it perceives. The code is a brilliant extension of the technical expertise of its creators — a child any parent would be proud of — and will allow them to live on (and continue to be well thought of) long from today.
From a business perspective, Adager is still one of the most cost-effective products on the market. In a field of vendors where you get ridiculously cost-penalized for buying a better machine — Adager remains a solid “ deal” — one of the few who do not behave so. They could easily (and reasonably!) sell their product and services for far, far more, yet they do not. Adager is as affordable for the smallest shop as it is for the largest.
From a company and human perspective, you have a collection of folks who are each technical masters in their own field, come together to specialize in database (not just TurboIMAGE!) theory and maintenance. All of them are personable, helpful, friendly, and down-to-earth. They get excited about new advances in the field, but are experienced and discerning enough to not be caught up in all the hype. They are mature enough to understand the limitations of any system, but are proficient enough to make that system perform to the best of its ability. They are a group of people worthy of the name “ team” . They are led by the incomparable Alfredo Rego, who continually points towards the path of excellence. Alfredo is a true leader: he drags no one anywhere, but with a kind grin points to a “ less undesirable” course, prompting positive action. This makes him delightful and indispensable to those who enjoy thinking, and bothersome to those who don't.
Adager is more than a product and a company — it is the embodiment of a philosophy and message that quality has no price, and that success is a measure of service to others, not one of profit or products.
For as long as I use an MPE box, there will always be a licensed-and-cheerfully-paid-for copy of Adager on it.
— Curtis Larsen [Covance Laboratories / USA]
This is simply to thank all of you at Adager, especially Patrick Mullen. After dealing with many consultants, I can say without hesitation that Patrick was, by far, the friendliest and most helpful person in this, our darkest hour!
— Nicolas Hebert [Positron Public Safety Systems / Canada and Worldwide]
The Saturday upgrade on a HP3000/969 from MPE/iX 5.5 to 6.0 with FOS, SUBSYS, and PATCH (no reactives) took approximately 3 hours. Then add an hour for an additional SLT, printing of downtime information to users, another hour to verify all the systems, and one and a half hours to start up our beginning of day processes — including input of downtime information.
I never seem to have enough time in the day to do all the extras for system administration and so I usually do this stuff in the wee hours of the morning (besides at a 24/7 facility that is the only time to do it).
Although I did not need the help of your staff this day, they have always been a great help, whatever my hours have been! And I thought I would take this moment to say thank you to everyone at Adager. Your product was one of my updates before going live and your people are always prompt and courteous in responding to my needs.
From calling you in South America for Help over 15 years ago till today, there has never been a question you and your staff did not explain thoroughly till I did understand not only what to do but why I was doing it. (And back then I really had no clue of what I was doing.) So again a heartfelt appreciation for all that you do at Adager.
— Catherine Litten [Valley Presbyterian Hospital / USA]
The plan was to delete some old data and then Repack and Reblock with my client's newly purchased copy of Adager. Saturday morning, for the first time in 16 years, Adager let me down. I called Adager support and René proceeded to dig into the problem. He dialed-in to my client's HP3000, delivered and tested new code, and called me at my home office when he was done. After the work we did this weekend with Adager the user is seeing, for example, a report that was taking 45 minutes completed in less than 10 minutes. Thanks for your high level of customer service.
— Doug Lynn [CANDL Software, Inc. / USA]
I have used Adager many times to enhance my ability to manage IMAGE data bases.
Before Adager, there were these pioneers in Guatemala who wanted to communicate about the HP3000 and did so via the HP3000 International Users Group. And so it came to pass that they and many, many others grew through the sharing and friendship of INTEREX. Now, after 25 years (how many high tech companies stay around that long?), we see continual growth of technology, ideas, and—most importantly—people through relationships.
Thank you Alfredo, René, and many others, for your enthusiastic contributions, for this has made our group special and second to none.
— Doug Mecham [AIS Consulting / USA]
Founder of INTEREX, The International Association of Hewlett-Packard Computing Professionals
Adager is by far the most helpful, understanding, and *available at all times of the night* company I have ever dealt with. They deserve an award.
— Jeff Mikolai [PC Mall, Mac Mall / USA]
If it wasn't for you, the only thing I could think of would be to unload and reload the database, which would have taken hours.
— Shirley Moore and Don Harris [Hewlett-Packard / Worldwide]
Those folks at Adager are truly great people. They have more than once helped us out of the ditches of despair. Sometimes those ditches had grown to be ravines but they just smiled and kept on pulling :-)
Yep... Truly great people to work with.
— Tony Newton [Providence Health Plan / USA]
Just a quick note to let you know that Patrick on your support line was a great help this morning. Not only did he get our problem fixed in a timely manner, but he dealt professionally with the fact that I was quite rattled by the time I called in (15,000 24/7 users dead in the water -- this quickly rattles me).
Thanks again to Patrick and whomever was smart enough to hire him.
— Chuck Nickerson [SRAR / USA]
I am truly awed at the accomplishment of you and the others who kept the faith through the years when our beloved machine was given up for dead. Surely you must smile wryly when HP now gives talks about the “ rebirth” of the HP3000.
The warm welcome you gave me at my first HP conference [HPWorld'99] since 1989 will be treasured for years to come.
I visited your web site and spent a long time reading the many thanks of the Adager friends. Who is surprised that Adager delivers quality support, information, and longevity? Not I. It is who you have always been. That you have been loyal and supportive of the HP3000 when just about everyone has succumbed to chasing other platforms is also no surprise. Why? Because you seem to be remarkably free from the fear that drives others to grasp at fads and be done in by greed.
The word that I associate with you is integrity in all its shades of meanings: adherence to high standards, wholeness, and a sound condition.
And, you have that rarest of combinations: vision wedded to stability and endurance. (Endurance without vision is uninspiring. And vision without endurance is like eating too much chocolate — one can simply get carried away by the untenable.)
I think the Adager way is a good model for anyone seeking to find wisdom in this world. This world that now suffers in so many ways because of our collective inability to think past the next few years to assess the impact of our decisions and lifestyles on the next generation — let alone the longer future of the world, which suffers from our inability to form true values and live those values and defend and protect those values.
May we be blessed by your presence for decades to come. And may you continue to be blessed for being who you are.
— Teresa Norman [ROC Software / Worldwide]
Cofounder of Tymlabs
Great Job! I just want to thank Ken, Patrick and René for the great support you gave me this week. It's hard to find such a high caliber of support with 3rd party vendors. Thanks again, you guys are great. Pass this on to your boss, you all deserve raises! I was very impressed and highly recommend your product.
— Pat Pagnusat [Kinko's / USA]
Before I discovered Adager I thought I might just seek a career in home sales or something.
Adager saved my toast a number of times when reorganizing a manufacturing data base for a major oil field tool manufacturer.
— Dick Patton [Houston, Texas / USA]
When using Adager, it's easy to forget just how much intelligence has been built into the software. It's one of those things that you take for granted until it saves your bacon, then you're glad that the Adager folks took the time to do it right. For me, that's the beauty of Adager — software that “ does the right thing,” regardless of how wrong you may be.
— Jim Phillips [Therm-O-Link Inc. / USA]
I wouldn't think for a moment of dropping Adager, for example.
Adager fan since 1984 (fanaticism enhanced via 2 years of being forced to use the “ competition” )!
— Tracy Pierce [San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District / USA]
We joined the ranks of HP3000 owners about 3 years ago. This was a very challenging time because our background was with IBM and the mainframe environment. Adager employees assisted (and continue to assist) us with IMAGE questions and issues. With all the other pieces of MPE/iX, it is nice to be able to rely on these people for our database questions/problems. I can only say “ thank you” for your patience and understanding with us when we call. And, by the way, the software works great also.
— Steve Pittenger [Geisinger Health System / USA]
Lockheed Martin and Adager go back to the early 80s. Adager is a provider of an Image/3000 database utility that is a must in your tool box. Correct broken database chains, resize the database, load the database with data, ... Need we say more?
— Richard L. Pringle [Lockheed Martin Space Operations at NASA / USA]
I thank you for such great service and for your fantastic product, Adager. Without them our users would have lost at least a day's work and would not have been back on-line in such a timely manner.
— John Pucci [San Juan Unified School District / USA]
Everything went very smoothly. Actually, too smoothly. My Adager jobs only ran a total of 6 hours. The job for masters only took 3 hours. I didn't know they would run so quickly, so I didn't check on them until the next day. I lost some hours there... but overall, it was very cool.
— Jennifer Ramaglia [QualChoice Health Plan / USA]
What a great utility. Thanks for having the vision to put it together. I have been using the manual for practical applications as necessary, and have found it to be very helpful. The notes are very explanatory and easy to understand.
— Steve Reeb [Hangar Hinge Company / USA]
What can I say about Adager and Adager's People that hasn't already been said? Except maybe that Adager is the “ Roy D. Mercer” of Database Utilities. They just break out their 55 gallon drum of Whoop — and take care of business!!
Seriously, after using Adager for 16 years, and having them more than once save my bacon, I would recommend Adager over anything else in the business. There are not many tools that I would consider loading on my production system without first testing it, but Adager is one. Not only have they supported me at 2:30 AM on the weekends and during regular business hours, they have also made me feel like a “ Friend of Adager” , which I am very pleased to be. (Not to mention those nifty Adager Cubes!). Thanks Alfredo, Ken, René, Patrick, Fred, and all the rest, for being The Best!
— James Reynolds [Presbyterian Health Plan / USA]
Alfredo, I agree with your comments about family life and about the “ over and above the call of duty” services provided by the Adager staff. I also have had the experience of arriving at a client site and working 55-65 hour weeks from day #2 and never having time to even unpack my personal stuff.
I would like to acknowledge the great support provided by the Adager staff. In particular, the following are Thank You notes to Ken Paul and Patrick Mullen.
A recent system “ hang” and “ hard” control-B system reset resulted in TurboImage chain errors for a client of mine. The staff responsible for the HP3000 had recently completed the 3000 System Administrator course. That staff had no TurboImage knowledge. Patrick Mullen walked the staff through the Adager “ Examine Path” and “ Examine Chain” commands. Patrick was very thorough in explaining the problems detected by these Adager functions and also explained in detail the basics of TurboImage database structure.
Ken Paul reviewed and explained the results of Adager's “ Examine Path” and “ Examine Chain” and he conducted additional analysis of the reported problems. Ken thoroughly explained everything. Ken then used Adager's “ Fix Path” and “ Fix Chain” functions, as well as Query, during our scheduled downtime window (after 1:00 AM). We had to schedule several of these off-hours “ fix” sessions and Ken was very accommodating.
I am comfortable with the fixes made by Ken and I have a better understanding of TurboImage paths and chains.
— Dan R. Rodriguez [Independent Consultant / USA]
I just purchased Adager for our shop. This is the third shop for which I've purchased Adager. I've made having Adager a condition of employment.
Why Adager? I once worked for a company that didn't use Adager. When I had an Image problem the Hewlett-Packard Response Center asked me, “ Why don't you use Adager to fix the problem?” That's why Adager. This is software that does everything that's in the brochure.
Database administration without Adager is cruel and unusual punishment.
Calling Adager support is like taking a course in Image. I always hang up with my problem resolved and knowing more about Image. They accomplish this without being smug or condescending.
— Joseph Rosenblatt [Integrated Industrial Systems / USA]
You folks are the standard by which we judge all others.
— Mark Salerno [Yale University Medical Center / USA]
One of the first classes that I attended when I was at HP in Palo Alto in the fall of '74 was Fred White's HP3000 IMAGE database class. As I remember there were about eight of us in the class and we all sat around a table with Fred at one end, somehow sensing we were at the beginning of a great exploration. The only time-intensive part of modifying an IMAGE database was the unloading and reloading of the data sets to and from tape. A couple of years later we heard of this product named Adager that managed to do this with disc instead, removing hours if not days from the process. There have been many enhancements over the years, and the quality that was infused into Adager could only be matched by the enthusiasm of its users.
Adager has set the bar for quality and service and truly reflects the spirit behind the people of the HP3000.
— Eric Sand [Data Research Associates / USA]
Adager and all of their staff are an absolute delight to deal with, from a technical and personal viewpoint. Their software is outstanding, and it flawlessly and continuously works as advertised.
— Gilles Schipper [GSA Inc. / Canada]
It took me a while to convince my management that Adager would become the right tool to manage Jumbo Datasets and also to repair damaged databases. Especially convincing was the fact that we had broken chains in an important database for unknown reasons.
The support of Adager worked great to help our developers in detecting the error! And instead of hours we needed only a quarter to repair the database with a minimal data loss which easily could be recovered!
I'm very happy that we have Adager in place (still in parallel to another database tool... but that is another—long—story).
— Andreas Schmidt [Computer Sciences Corporation, CSC Ploenzke AG / Germany and Worldwide]
We have used the services of Adager for so long I forget the first time [1979]. Before that the native ability of image, then turbo image, to make small manageable changes to the structure of the database was not existent. You either did without or wrote programs yourselves to make the changes if at all possible. Now with Adager the method is seamless. I even have plant managers (whose business is not computer science) on several continents who are able to make the changes that are needed to the database.
— Larry Simonsen [Flowserve Corporation / USA]
Adager's support ranks the highest.
— Jim Starnes [Ochsner Health Plan / USA]
While it has been my misfortune to need the expert services of Adager not once but twice this year, both occurrences have led to amazing feats of technical support with skill, patience, and dedication. Both René and Patrick did all that was needed to repair some gruesomely broken chains in our largest datasets. In each case the process took most of 3 days, with the database and system returned to the users in perfect shape come Monday morning. It goes without saying that I couldn't have done this without them. I hope I never need their services again, but if I do, I know I'm in exceptional hands.
— John Stephens [EOS Group / USA]
Perhaps one of the stranger things I will say is that I regret that I have not had more occasion to use this wonderful and wondrous product! I used it to make a series of customer-required changes to items in several databases that contained preliminary customer data, and it made a difficult task much easier, while providing validation that I was doing exactly what I intended and what the customer required. Also, since I would require an “ audit trail,” I was able to manually walk through each of these changes without applying them, to ensure that when I ran my job streams, they would in fact work.
— Greg Stigers [CGI / USA]
This is a much-delayed thanks to René Woc at Adager for helping us out with a db problem earlier this month. My co-worker Annette called for help with possible Image db corruption, and René quickly sorted out the problem, even helping create a batch job to run Adager that we could use in the future. The db was not corrupt, but a flag had been set making the db unavailable, and to an Image novice like myself, the resulting messages were ominous.
Thanks again to René for saving the day.
— Scott Swartzell [Agilent Technologies / Worldwide]
Scott Swartzell writes: “ This is a much-delayed thanks to René Woc at Adager for helping us out with a db problem earlier this month...”
All in a day's work for René, and Adager in general. They have saved my bacon many times.
— John Clogg [Coldwater Creek / USA]
I read most of the comments present herein and found nothing to surprise me. This I realized is quite amazing. How does a company gain such respect?
I am a most fortunate user of Adager for 16 years. I have not had the significant opportunities to test the depth and breadth of customer support as have some others. I have used many of the functions over these years, always with the same predictably correct results. I can reorganize my data for best results and neither fear that I should worry about the correctness of the process, nor that I spend more time doing it than I gain.
While I have not found myself needing to repair a disaster, I have gotten my fingers way ahead of my brain on numerous occasions while using Adager for its more straightforward tasks. These occasions could have caused grand inconveniences but did not as Adager was always a lot smarter than my fingertips, and stopped me to warn of my foolish keystrokes.
Adager has provided such a steady non-challenging environment for keeping my well-working system working well, that I find no surprise in learning how this same team rises to meet even the most supremely grand, monstrously horrible, amazingly catastrophic, número-uno screw-ups, disasters and difficulties in which we find ourselves.
As long as I work on an HP3000 so will Adager be there with me.
— Tom Thompson [WinCup Holdings, Inc. / USA]
I've used Adager for almost 20 years and would not be without it. Almost every shop I've worked in has Adager. I've been able to fix critical database problems quickly and safely as well as perform routine database management tasks with ease. And Adager's customer support is topped by none!
— Janet Thorp [Thorp & Thorp Consulting / USA]
Fantastic software without any training needed. Their support staff provides quick and effective solutions anywhere anytime regardless of time zone.
— Toh Tiau Hong [Singapore Computer Systems / Singapore]
It is really quite rewarding to work with vendors and their staff who really seem to care about the customers' problems and get involved.
— James Trudeau [Computer Sciences Corporation / USA]
René, thank you so much for your quick assistance [regarding the Internet download of Adager]. Your instructions were super and I was able to follow them without difficulties.
Did the download and installation late on Friday. Ran our program to add a new item field and all worked fine. Added data, etc.
I liked working with this process. Can we do it again next time there is an Adager update?
Again, I appreciate all your efforts. Thanks.
— Hélène Viau [Vancouver Island Real Estate Board / Canada]
Thank you for making software that not only works but is MIS-Department friendly.
— Leticia Villegas [Cordis-Webster / USA]
Adager is by far the best 3rd party tool we use. It's rock-solid reliable, easy to use, and has expert, prompt and respectful support.
— Bob Walker [Capilano College / Canada]
I sure appreciate the excellent help I received from Patrick and René at Adager in resolving a problem with large jumbo IMAGE data sets.
Saved me large amounts of processing time and I got an “ at-a-Boy” from the boss and Company.
— Ron Wallace [Priority Health / USA]
Just wanted to thank you for utmost assistance when we had an IMAGE database in “ Output Deferred” mode.
— Claes Wallin [SCA Hygiene Products / Sweden]
I just wanted to extend my sincere appreciation to everyone at the Adager Corporation for all the help that they provided to Afco during our Disaster Recovery process.
You guys are true professionals! Thank You.
— Tom Walsh [Afco Systems / USA and Canada]
I would like to add my comments to the list of other grateful users of Adager. I too was faced with the dreaded broken chain message that we all fear. We had a power failure that “ Murphy” would love. Not only did it take out the computer room, it took out the UPS as well! After an ungracious crash, we brought our system back thinking recovery took care of the problem. Wrong! Monday, we found dozens of broken chains on a dataset that effectively shut down our ability to ship product.
I called Adager and René was there. He offered to look at our problem. After it was determined by René that it would only take a few hours to fix the problem, I asked if they could help. They not only helped, they did everything and I was back in production in 4 hours. If I had tried myself, I know it would have taken me 24 hours. As a follow up, I found another set that had to be repaired and René was there (on Father's day, no less) to help me with fixing my database.
In the 13 years that I have used Adager, I have nothing but the highest respect for the product and the people behind it. I never have to worry that I am alone against the world.
Great Job! I just want to thank Patrick and René for the great support you gave me this week. It's hard to find such a high caliber of support with 3rd party vendors. Thanks again, you guys are great. Pass this on to your boss, you all deserve raises! I was very impressed and highly recommend your product.
— Steve Wasula [Siemens Information and Communication Networks / Worldwide]
If you have an IMAGE/SQL database and you need to change it, you get Adager. End of story.
— Mark Wilkinson [Independent HP3000 Consultant / UK]
Hi René:
Thanks a lot for all of your support and good information. Thanks for sharing your philosophy and direction. We're happy campers!
Regards to you and all the Adager folks.
— Paul O. Wood [BlueCross BlueShield / USA]
... A sample of comments from our HP3000 Friends