Re: New Era

In article <4cf6br$8r5@cssun.mathcs.emory.edu> fred@infosoft.com (Fred Hubbard) writes: > >NewEra is a growing child. Our local Informix User Group recently = >hosted Geoff Roach, Director of Tools Marketing at Informix, who shared = >with us that NewEra 3.0 (due mid '96) will feature a spaking new and = >thoroughly functional window painter. > It needs it. I'm not trying to be over-critical; it's damn difficult to do this stuff. Progress, for example, had at least 9 releases before (IMO) they got something that was really useable for complex data entry screens, and they *still* can't do QBE in the sense we're used to. No dynamic SQL capability. Only now can you execute SPL that returns values - and I don't know if it works, because their ODBC dataserver doesn't, and their server doesn't support SPL (or ref. integrity in the dictionary). Delphi had an easier job in a lot of ways. Borland have a lot of institutional expertise in Windows s/ware AND they haven't tried to have Delphi run under unix/X-Motif. >In addition to Peter's praises on NewEra's scripting language, which is = >an extended 4GL, I'd subscribe that NE's object oriented capabilities = >set it aside from other graphical development environments. Watch for = >spiffy class libraries and agents that will provide nifty functionality. > Yes, I think NE's a lovely language. Enough OO to work, without the complexities of multiple inheritance, based on a rock-solid 4GL. Much cleaner than say C++ is to C. However, Object Pascal has a lot of OO stuff also. Heaps of aftermarket stuff around now, VBX support etc. I think it's weaker than NE, but it has a following that's over 100X the size and given the price-functionality comparison, going to stay that way. (ie it might not be as good a language, but it's 1/20 the price). I know app partitioning is/will be available with NE, but damn few people are going to need more than I can fake now using SPL, 4GL on the server and any client that can execute SPL/dynamic SQL. Some will, for sure, but not many. Sounds like I'm hostile to NE, but really I'm not. Just attempting to be realistic and c-s databases are a new ball game compared with host based ones. Given my investment in 4GL code and the upward compatibility of pretty well everything except screen i/o, I *want* NE to succeed big-time. But to do it in the Windows desktop area, it's competing on both features and price with some damn good products - which certainly isn't the case on the server end. Peter Wiley