Re: Questions about Client/Server(informix) development

Grace Wu <grace_wu@bio-rad.com> wrote: :We plan to develop a client/server application. Informix OnLine 7.21 on :HP-UX 10.10 will be on the server side. NT will be on the client side. :However, we have not decide on the front-end development tool yet. It :could be Access + VB or PowerBuilder. I have a few questions and hope :someone may answer my questions. :1. I know we need ODBC driver on client side, but what else do we need :on the client side? One Informix sales rep said we need Informix product :Connect (was called Inet previously). Another Informix sales rep said :Connect is the run time version of Inet, and we really need ESQL/C and :Inet to do the development. Openlink said we don't need Informix's :product if we use their ODBC driver. So my question is what do we really :need? If we use ODBC driver from Openlink, does that mean we don't need :ESQL/C and Inet on the client side? If we use other ODBC driver such as :Intersolv's, do we need Inet only, or do we need ESQL/C and Inet? How :about the Informix CLI? What other options do we have? For Access/VB you need ODBC. For PowerBuilder you may also use "direct drivers" that use Informix I-Net. I-Net (or Connect) is a proprietary connectivity library from Informix that gives you connection to your Informix database. Tools may use this library only or ODBC. ODBC drivers may be implemented by doing calls to the I-Net library or it may implement it's own connection to the database. If you buy ODBC from Informix (it at least used to be called Informix CLI) it's implemented on top of I-Net (or may be they now call it Connect). The CLI product used to include I-Net however. Whatever you buy from Informix you should *not* need any development version. Although you are going to do development it's not at the I-Net (Connect) or ODBC level. You will essentially use it only as a runtime tool. To my mind you need a development version for C-development only. Informix may disagree in which case you must buy a development version. Whatever you do you don't need the ESQL/C product. The only problem is that at least at one time you had to buy it to get the I-Net product. If all this seems like a big jumble it's because it is just that. It's not easy to grasp what product you need as evidenced buy your call to different Informix sales reps. It's due time that Informix create understandable products. They should have something like: 1. I-Net - runtime/development connectivity product. 2. ODBC driver for I-Net (requires I-Net to be installed). 3. ESQL/C library for I-Net development. These are the products they have, but they sell them in packages that doesn't make too much sence. If you go to OpenLink the whole thing is much easier. You buy an OpenLink request broker for your server. This is bught for a number of simultaneous users. You buy (or download) one ODBC driver for MS Windows NT and install it on as many PC's as you want. Even if you have a five user license for the request broker on your server you can install the ODBC driver on 1000 or more Windows NT machines. You do not need any product from Informix other than the database engine to use the OpenLink drivers. You get better performance, significantly extended functionality and much simpler installation from the OpenLink drivers than from the current Informix products. :2. As I mentioned earlier that we have not decide on the front-end :development tool, and I understand which development tool is best for :the application has to do with what do you try to accomplish in the :application. However, I would like to hear the pro and con about using :PowerBuilder or Access + VB as development tool from people that have :experience with these tools, and is there anything to watch for when :using these tools? If you use Access + VB I wouldn't plan on using Access for anything but reporting. All programming should be done in VB. Also remember to use RDO in VB, not DAO. The performance difference is significant. I don't have much experience with PowerBuilder so I can't comment on that. You should however look into Java as well. You migth want to check out Visual Cafe from Symantec and the OpenLink JDBC drivers. Although it's early yet, and you will probably have some problems with Java, it does look very much like it's the wave of the future. It also solves the problem of writing server side programs which VB doesn't solve at all and PowerBuilder only have very limited solutions for currently. 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