Informix NewEra vs. other possibilities

Vaibhav Dabholkar (nexgen@shakti.ncst.ernet.in) wrote: : We are trying to port an Informix-On Line 4GL Application to a GUI : based interface. In this regard is it better to use PowerBuilder 4.0 : Or Informix NewEra 1.0 ? Hi, I'd like to extend the above question a little further. We are presently considering migrating from our current 4GL/alpha terminal environment to graphical user interfaces (mostly PC/MSWindows, maybe also Mac). The databases (Online) shall remain on our UNIX server, but the applications would be migrated. Some trials with 4GL for Windows were very unsatisfactory: Much too slow, unattractive user interface. We have accumulated a little experience with INet/PC, ODBC (Q+E) and standard applications like MS-Access, -Excel and -Word and have been generally quite pleased with the results. Our 4GL applications are in most cases not too transaction intensive, and the amount of data that is transferred should not be too high, so speed considerations should not be too much of a problem. We have heard quite a few contradictory opinions and impressions about NewEra, so I'd like to present the following questions to people who have experience in this field: 1) What is the advantage of NewEra over other GUI tools with ODBC access capability for Informix databases? (We don't know PowerBuilder, but what about VisualBasic/Visual C++? May be even VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) together with MS-Access/Excel/Word could do what we want and would be MUCH cheaper.) 2) How much work is involved in migrating a UNIX 4GL application to NewEra? Can I just recompile the old code with some cosmetic modifications, or is an almost complete rewrite necessary? 3) Has anybody converted 4GL applications into Windows apps using non-Informix tools and programming environments, such as Visual Basic or similar? What were your experiences, especially regarding the time involved and the speed of the application at runtime? I'll contact Informix sales in Germany about more info on NewEra, but it is always better to get info from "real" programmers and users to compare that to the sales hype. Thanks for any info, Richard -- +----------------------------+-------------------------------------------+ | Dr. Richard Spitz | INTERNET: spitz@ana.med.uni-muenchen.de | | EDV-Gruppe Anaesthesie | Tel : +49-89-7095-3421 | | Klinikum Grosshadern | FAX : +49-89-7095-8886 | | 81366 Munich, Germany | | +----------------------------+-------------------------------------------+