Re: Opinions Wanted: 4GL or New Era??

Dan, My company is in the process (and have been for a while now) of converting Foxbase for Unix to Informix. My reccomendation would be to use 4GL. I understand the frustration of trying to make 4GL programs work like Foxbase. After many weeks of ranting about 4GL I finally learned some tricks to make these applications work very similar to Foxbase and the users don't see a difference except for speed of data retrival. If you need any more details on what we are doing and how we got around some of these issues you brought up just drop me a line. Joe ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joseph Cullipher |E-mail: joseph@cannonexpress.com PO Box 364 |opinions express are those of my own and Springdale, AR 72764 USA |don't necessarily reflect those of my company ------------------------------------------------------------------------- On Mon, 28 Jul 1997, Dan Cradler wrote: } We are going to rewrite a custom Foxbase for Unix application because we } have outgrown its capabilities. We want to use Informix Workgroup Server } as our database engine since we are also getting accounting and payroll } software that runs on it. Our custom application runs on dumb terminals } (mostly VT 525 and other VT compatibles). We plan to stick with the } terminals since they are cost-effective, reliable, and efficient for our } purposes. What we are trying to figure out is which Informix (or 3rd } party) tool would be the best for this task. It appears that our options } are: 4GL, New Era with character VCL, and ESQL for C. Is anybody else } writing new code for terminals? What do you reccommend? So far, we are } unimpressed with 4GL's screen handling abilities (no way to make } pull-down menus, no arbitrary placement of text on the screen, no way to } get single keystrokes to make your own menus, etc.). Is there something } we are missing or a third-party tool that removes these limitations? New } Era looks much nicer but so far we haven't found anyone that uses the } character VCL. Has anyone tried it? Can you design effective screens } with it for use on terminals? If we choose ESQL, is there a good screen } handling library out there (better than curses) that would work well } with it? } } Thanks } } Dan Cradler } dcradler@clp.com }