walker@crcge1.cge.fr (Gary Walker) (07/18/90)
We're looking for more information concerning tools for interactively
building application graphical user interfaces (GUI) that attach to a
RDBMS at the SQL level. The tools should run on UNIX (SUN) or VMS
platforms (and possibly MS-DOS, although this is a lesser need).
Applications are written in C, Objective-C, and C++.
For the moment the target RDBMS is Oracle, but requirements could
change and we would like some flexibility to choose another vendor now or
in the future. (This is becoming more important to us particularly after
encountering Oracle support problems here in Europe that validate much of
what we've been reading on the net.)
Ideally the tool would allow integration to both MOTIF and OPEN LOOK
and provide some support X11 and for character terminals. Eventually we
would want the applications to run in a distributed environment, although
this is not an initial requirement.
I am familiar with Glockenspiel's CommonView and Rochkind's Extended
Virtual Toolkit, but these are C/C++ library toolkits - quite good at
supporting the different environments - but they require development at
programming level that requires more effort than we would like to expend.
I saw Gupta Technology's SQL-Windows product nearly two years ago and was
very impressed, but unfortunately it was tailored to run only in the
Microsoft Windows/Presentation Manager world. (Is this still true?)
Accell claims MOTIF / OPEN LOOK support, but at a recent demonstration
in Paris Accell showed only character text and character-mode with
"mosaic graphics" being run in essentially a terminal emulation mode on a
graphics workstation. There was not even a support of the ISO 8-bit
character standard, so they couldn't show French words with accents, for
example. We heard claims that a full integration version with OPEN LOOK
will be available late this year (or later - there is always a delay for
American products or upgrade versions to be released here in Europe).
From what I saw they much work to do; some skepticism seems justified.
Oracle has SQL*Forms, which is fairly versatile but still doesn't
support a GUI. This should be rectified with a new release, we are told,
but the low-level of detail SQL*Forms demands and long learning curve are
not ideal. We are also told that an Oracle product called SQL*Graph or
SQL*Graphics could be very interesting for us. Unfortunately, after
repeated promises from Oracle France to send documentation and after
several reminders that we haven't received anything, we are still waiting.
We haven't looked at Oracle's line of CASE products yet, but we did
see an excellent demonstration of AXI*CASE shown by Sertig Corporation
in Paris. This is a very attractive product that produces SQL*Forms code
as an output. Thus, when SQL*Forms supports the GUIs, so, too, should
AXI*Case, as we understand it. We were impressed by the simplicity,
organizational style, and thoughtful integration capabilities of AXI*CASE.
Buying into a full CASE tool strikes fear into some upper management,
and this is understandable. CASE offers the advantage of controlling
everything: the methodology, the specification, the generation of code, the
documentation. That's exactly what seems to bother the managers the most:
it's too often a bundled solution that closes out options to purchase and
replace separate parts.
So we're still looking for other GUI application builders that hook to
SQL that come in higher than a Toolkit level but necessarily as high as at
the CASE level of full control. Whatever information anyone has is welcome,
particularly pointers to published articles, comparison studies, name
contacts, etc. I'll summarize in 10 days.
Gary Walker
Laboratoires de Marcoussis
Route de Nozay
91460 Marcoussis, FRANCE
tel: (33)-(1)-64.49.14.73
fax: (33)-(1)-64.49.06.95