Mark_David_McWiggins@cup.portal.com (10/19/87)
Someone above asked for database recommendations/experience ... My company does warehouse automation applications. We use networked PC's and are currently looking for a 4GLish system to standardize on. We've looked at demo versions of Progress, Zim, and Sculptor and bought the full (SCO Xenix V) version of Informix 4GL. All of these suffer from at least one "fatal flaw," in our view. We sell to unsophisticated users, many of whom don't know a database from a toaster, but they do know they like flashy windows. This kills Progress and Zim, both of which look pretty clunky. Sculptor performed impressively and its windows were quite fast and might well have served, but it's a "keyed file system" and not a relational database. Each file can have only one key. Exit Sculptor. We bought Informix 4GL after reading the net and seeing no serious flames and on another recommendation, thinking it would at least be suitable for a small project we're doing. Wrong! The spec calls for a "browser", with the current record highlighted, and the product doesn't allow for this. You can highlight fields in a form, but EVERY FIELD gets highlighted if you specify highlighting! The tech support person was unable to suggest a C workaround, nor could we think of one. There are other annoyances: unhelpful error messages, a core dump when running the compiler, a slooow two-level preprocesor implementation, a language that seems relatively quite low level, yet still leaves holes ... $1239 down the drain. We've developed our own many-moving-parts 4GLish system with YACC & C, using Btrieve (nice DOS version, Xenix version seems flaky; any other file manager could easily be substituted) and Windows for Data (strange documentation, but a very nice product). This will serve for the moment, although we're still looking at alternatives. We're going to an Ingres seminar in a few weeks ... Recommendation: don't buy without getting your hands on for at least half a day. Wish we hadn't!
rupley@arizona.edu (John Rupley) (10/20/87)
Would someone comment on /rdb? There has been little mention of it, at least recently, in this newsgroup, although /rdb seems to have been targetted intelligently for UNIX systems. How does it compare in power, speed, interface, etc, with the such standards as Informix or Oracle? Any serious flaws?
ries@trwrb.UUCP (Marc Ries) (10/21/87)
In article <1037@cup.portal.com> Mark_David_McWiggins@cup.portal.com writes: [purged] > >We bought Informix 4GL after reading the net and seeing no serious >flames and on another recommendation, thinking it would at least be >suitable for a small project we're doing. Wrong! The spec calls >for a "browser", with the current record highlighted, and the >product doesn't allow for this. You can highlight fields in a form, >but EVERY FIELD gets highlighted if you specify highlighting! The >tech support person was unable to suggest a C workaround, nor could >we think of one. > I am not sure how you are attacking this problem, but it is definitely possible to highlight the current record within an Informix 4GL program without causing all of the other fields to highlight *and* with a C routine. In general, the Tele-Tech Support people are glorified secretaries. The *real* 4GL people are reserved for the consulting and custom programing jobs. The error messages *are* unhelpful. I have never had a core dump during the compile (many run-time dumps, but never during a compile) If you can give me a *real* UUCP return address, I could send you more info. -- Marc A. Ries sdcrdcf!---\ ihnp4!------\----- trwrb! --- ries