Re: character-based tools on NT?

David Williams <djw@smooth1.demon.co.uk> wrote: : the short answer I believe is that onmonitor is written in 4GL. : Informix will not port 4GL to NT just so that they can write : onmonitor! I would not want them to do that. : a) It costs too much (NT is nothing like Unix at the C level). : : b) Other database vendors e.g. SQL Server, Sybase provide flashy : GUI tools for database admin. A character based tool would look : poor compared to these tools. People using NT expect a GUI : interface as everything else running on NT has a GUI interface. : : If Informix provide a GUI tool why develop a character based tool? I am not asking for a character based version of onmonitor for NT. All I need is a GUI tool that have essentially the same functionality. The problem is that right now it seems like I have to use the command line tools on NT for the purposes that onmonitor is used on Unix. This is going backward at a fast pace and makes the NT versions of the engines hard to use and less interesting. (Some may cheer at that, but I am more customer driven.) There are three sets of tools: a. command line b. character based form oriented (or whatever you want to call them like onmonitor on Unix) c. GUI tools The character based version of onmonitor must be retained for a long time on Unix. Command line tools are needed for scripting and other purposes on Unix as well as NT and must be compatible on both OSs. GUI tools are the future for database management. Initially they are for direct interactive management. Eventually they will incoorporate scripting options so even the command line tools may no longer be needed. The key issue here is however that a good tool will have to be included with the engine. As time goes by the real goal must be to reduse the need for manual management to almost nothing. I can sure conceive of dynamic creation and modification of indexes, fragmentation strategies, table placement, log size and placement, tempdbspace management and other areas of automization based on actual database usage. It will take some years, but have to be done as the number of installations grows to where there will be significant problems in finding enough good DBAs. Nils.Myklebust@idg.no NM Data AS, P.O.Box 9090 Gronland, N-0133 Oslo, Norway My opinions are those of my company The Informix FAQ is at http://www.iiug.org