Re: Strw Poll : I-4GL for NT

Tim Schaefer (tschaefe@mindspring.com) wrote: : Mike Segel wrote: : > : > David C. Harrison wrote: : > > : > > Mike Segel wrote: This has the potential of becoming the biggest religious debate since vi versus emacs, so I had to add my $.02. I don't know if that many people who use NT are that aware of its shortcomings. For a lot of the typical corporate needs, NT does a good job and can usually be at least "pseudo-administered" by someone resident, without needing to have a UNIX-literate on site. I think a careful consideration will show that UNIX would be a better solution from a technical standpoint, but I view NT as a good solution in many cases, if only from the familarity, training, and comfort-level standpoint. The problem is, Informix has been neglecting the NT product line. Read it yourself in the latest Informix SEC filing (May 1997--go through Yahoo quotes). Obviously, Informix has figured this out, with the recent release of ROM and the 7.22+ engines. The performance has been there throughout the 7.X line, in certain single- and few-user applications. I've actually seen specialized NT 3.51 servers perform on a par with their UNIX brethren (that may be a little strong for a religions discussion ;] The new stuff from Informix is trying to make it as easy to administer and use as SQL Server, and they've done a pretty decent job, for a start. I've found that once you finally get the NT O/S set up properly, the Informix/NT combination is relatively stable, but getting the O/S right is a bear. The hidden danger of this NT-ization of Informix will be the trivialization of the database. Since it looks as easy as SQL-Server, it must be as easily-managed, right? GUI development environments such as PowerBuilder are great for pretty screens, but the developer is almost totally divorced from SQL. With such an easy-to-administer database and such a friendly development environment, it shouldn't be any problem to throw together this new ap in a coupla weeks, right? It'll be a fun time to be a DBA. So many projects to save, so little time. Joe -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joe Lumbley(jlumbley@netcom.com) author of: "INFORMIX DBA Survival Guide" Slaving away on "INFORMIX DEBUGGERS Survival Guide", available early 1998 from Prentice Hall/Informix Press. If you have debugging tips, tools, or ideas to share, please send me some e-mail. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------