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0 pointsmgummelt5y ago0 comments

How is legacy compatibility a moat? Any RPA engine, certainly Microsoft's is going to cover the same stack. That's one of the consequences of RPA - when you integrate at the UI layer, you get compatibility for free.

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6 comments · 2 top-level

ethbr05y ago· 2 in thread

"Integrate at the UI layer" is a can of worms.

In simple cases, it's clicking a button.

In real practice, it's triggering some esoteric sub-event the developer hooked, or returning coherent data tables from whatever not-table thing a developer cobbled together.

Example from current work (US government system, Oracle Forms / Java based): a scrollable "grid", actually composed of individual, carefully-lined up text boxes, containing 12 rows, which moves / updates the contents of each box as the user scrolls.

mgummeltOP5y ago

I'm not saying integrating with UI layer isn't fragile. I'm saying it doesn't offer a "moat".

ethbr05y ago

My comment wasn't about fragility, it was about how compatibility was long tail.

And long tail, accreted one weird customer at a time things are definitely a moat.

m1sta_5y ago· 2 in thread

Most of them look for window events. I've not seen an RPA tool that actually reads the screen like a human, even though that's how you're thinking about it.

ethbr05y ago

The bit players simply map Active Accessibility / whatever MS calls it now (Windows Automation Framework?).

The more serious players shadow Windows events.

The real stuff does process injection and directly shadow copies / modifies in-memory data structures.

mgummeltOP5y ago

That's not how I'm thinking about it.

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