Re: Informix 4gl vs Powerbuilderish products?

>Use a good screen generated that allows for many bells and whisles. >4GL can be user freindly. Check out >Fourgen >The Technology Group >CodeGen >Any others out there? I have some observations to make about this. After using FourGen for a couple of years, I came to the conclusion that it's a great technical achievement in the use of 4GL, but it's a pain as a development tool. I find their feature list (perhaps unsurprisingly :) adds too much overhead from a resource requirement point of view. But before I get crucified by Perry et al, this is just a personal opinion, and I don't get into situations where code re-engineering is a big deal compared to our local hardware costs (as odd as that may sound). So, if you have the hardware and the time and infrastructure to adopt FourGen's tools and methodology, it's probably a good choice. If you don't, may I recommend our ZenMPG (:-) ), which generates maintenance programs catering for header-only, header-detail, lookups, zooms, listing reports, etc. It does not provide for notes, to-do, code re-engineering, etc. However, the code is lean (source +- 20k for a simple header-only as opposed to FourGen's +-200k!) and mean. The code is also formatted to (what I believe is :) the best, most logical, standard around. Otherwise, I believe there is even a code generator somewhere on the Informix FTP site. >I still believe character based is best for fast working data entry personnel. Amen. >Use 4gl 6.x, online 6.x, dumb terminals, multi-view, GUI report generator. >A couple of PCs for adhoc queries, spread sheet analysis.... I'd say OnLine 7.x, but otherwise, amen. -- Cheers, Billy. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- billy.wheeler@pixie.co.za +27 11 803 2151 p.o. box 3463, rivonia, rsa, 2128 +27 83 250 2324 informix developer at large (and i mean _large_) -----------------------------------------------------------------------------