Re: Informix news release in my mailbox

On Mon, 11 May 1998 18:10:07 GMT, Jacob Salomon <jake@garpac.com> wrote: >Hi family, > >I (and probably most of you) just got this my (your) mailbox: > >***INFORMIX NEWS FOR PARTNERS*** > >Hot off the Press: >INFORMIX REVITALIZES 4GL APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT TOOLS > >Continued Commitment Addresses Global Deployment, Performance and Year >2000 Solutions > >http://www.informix.com/informix/corpinfo/ifxnews/press/1998/4gl.htm > >Chasing that link, here's an excerpt: > > INFORMIX-4GL 7.2 delivers several new features requested > by the Informix VAR and developer community. Developers > can now deploy a single application to the world market, > leveraging the 4GL Global Language Support (GLS) > deployment platform. DBCENTURY provides a fast and > reliable solution to "Year 2000" (Y2K) risks, and a simple > upgrade path for applications which were initially coded to > support two digit year fields. Additionally, the new release > provides improved performance, ensuring more responsive > business applications. > >OK, now for features we REALLY wanted: How about: But we realy do want the GLS features. Without that 4GL had been dead, real dead very soon. So far we have been able to make it with 7 bit characters, but we should realy have changed that some years ago. Now we have, but have significant problems due to the lack of true support of this and other features of GLS in 4GL. The DBCENTURY is a minor issue to enable input of 2 digit years only. I have been in the computer bussiness since about 1975 and have allways used 4 digit years for display and enabled input in that way. Those who haven't can thank themselves. Of course some have to work with things others have mangled up before them, in which case even the DBCENTURY facility may be a major issue. >- Automatic highlighting of lines in DISPLAY and INPUT ARRAY? Of course, but it isn't particularly hard to do it in input array. Display array isn't very usefull anyway for many other reasons. >- Row-addressed navigation in DISPLAY and INPUT ARRAY > i.e. NEXT ROW or NEXT FIELD row[n].field Of course, and the solution that exist here isn't very elegant to say the least. >- NEXT FIELD field_name in a variable A very minor issue. A previous field option that would be used if the user hit uparrow or left arrow when in the first position of a field is much more important to us. It would be so easy to implement, and could have been done within the current syntax by simply adding another optional parameter to the next field statement. >- OPEN WINDOW window_name in a variable Of course, except that open window is in itself a design error. There should have been a define window that didn't open anything at all. Then you could have used current window is at will anywhere in your application. You do need a way to find out what is the current window so you could open a window at the start of a function and go back to whatever was the current window before that without closing the opened window. A stack of windows doesn't work. You need to say: let p_lastwindow = current_window -- a built in variable current window is w_somewindow -- use this window current window is p_lastwindow -- back to last window -- without closing anything. And then of course: display ..... in window w_window which didn't have to be the current window. >And about 2.1 zillion feature requests listed in the IIUG archives. But I checked the first part of this list a week or so ago. A lot of the things mentioned there are either implemented by Informix by now or there are perfectly viable solutions available through the IIUG software libraries. These solutions could and should be included with the product of course. For those features that rely on software written by someone I am sure they would let Informix distribute them at no cost. >You know, stuff that would ease our lives as 4GL programmers, letting us >do the kind of things C (and ESQL) programmers can do. Yes, but someone need to go through that list and update it. It's out of date. If I had planned on using 4GL a lot more I would have done it now that Informix is putting more resources into 4GL. However as I am moving away from it as fast as I can (using Java instead) I am not the right person. I do however think it would be a good idea for someone more interested to do that. The IIUG should however clear this with Informix first, to see how real the interest and ability to do something about it is. There is even a tools group in the advocacy program for this purpose. It's lead by Malcolm Weallans (malcolm@iiug.org), but there is no list to post to. >Any Informed persons out there to offer a knowledgeable opinion? You judge. Nils Myklebust NM Data AS Norway E-mail: Nils.Myklebust@nmdata.com FAQ at: http://www.iiug.org/techinfo/faq/faq_top.html (Now with ODBC info under "Third party products".)