[comp.databases] Anyone with experience of Uniface 4GL forms tool

cpl@bhpmrl.oz.au (Paul Lloyd) (02/11/91)

My apologies if this sort of help query has been posted before.

Does anyone have any direct experience with using Uniface for application
development, especially using Oracle or Ingres as the supported DBMS?  I 
am particularly interested in your comments as to how well it supports 
the data types in these DBMSs and what you need to do to get around any 
it does not.  While DBMS-independent 4GL tools allow you to move the DBMS 
vendor into the commodity-provider class, I can see some limitations to 
their use (a least common-denominator approach, for one).

Uniface has its own data dictionary which is central to defining the 
forms and their relationship to one another.  It is not possible for 
Uniface to access the system catalogue directly in any DBMS, but you can 
produce a report (ASCII file) which, with reformatting, can be loaded 
into Uniface.  What problems to you forsee in trying to maintain two 
data dictionaries for the one database?

Also, Uniface claims to be able to access two or more DBMS products
from within the same application (one of the few who can?).  Has
anyone had experience with this as yet?  Has anyone used it in a client-
server situation and was it easy to set up and run (Uniface uses its
own network process-process protocol with both client and server
versions, instead of say SQL*Net or Ingres*Net) - Uniface claims that
their approach reduces network traffic over the DBMS-vendor's network
managers?

Thanks in advance,

--
     /\/\       Paul Lloyd, Superintendent Computer Systems 
    / / /\      BHP Research - Melbourne Laboratories
   / / /  \     245-273 Wellington Rd Mulgrave Vic 3170 AUSTRALIA
  / / / /\ \    Phone   :  +61-3-560-7066 ext:7375
  \ \/ / / /    Fax     :  +61-3-561-6709
   \  / / /     ACSnet  :  cpl@bhpmrl.oz.au
    \/\/\/      Internet:  cpl%bhpmrl.oz.au@uunet.uu.net