Re: Need help choosing Informix products

In article <38ph2a$26e@crl9.crl.com> timward@crl.com (Timothy E. Ward) writes: >We are developing an application for a client and would appreciate >some assistance in selecting Informix development tools. >The client is a Value Added Reseller (VAR) for Informix, (excluded detail) >Some of our specific questions: >1) Since our development database is so small, we are inclined to do the > development on the SE server. Are there any reasons why we should > avoid SE in favor of Online? (Other than the restrictions such as > no VARCHAR, and 10 character database names) > We need to weigh any reasons we can solicit against the additional > overhead of setting up the Online Server. (Is it a LOT more overhead?) > Use On-Line. SE is old and slow. There is no additional overhead. Use the default tbconfig.std and a cooked rootdbs and you will be up and running very quickly. Everything you need to know is in the on-line administration manual. I installed On-Line on a Sun Sparc 20 yesterday in 15 minutes (just for practice) - it doesn't take very long. >2) We are leery about utilizing proprietary fourth gen. development tools> such as 4-GL and 4-GL FORMS. However, if a great number of people> sing praises regarding these tools, we might be swayed. The question> is - should we continue our search for a well-established screen-handler> such as JAM (anyone got any other suggestions?), or look to 4-GL> and 4-GL FORMS for our screen handling. > (Although, they don't appear very robust at first glance.) Use the Informix 4gl - it is in effect a glorified c preprocessor with lots of library routines. Writing menu's and screens in c will be a major waste of your time. Well written 4gl can be ported to other products very easily. Anything really hairy you can write in esql/c or plain c and link in. JAM is proprietary also. It just works on more dbms's. >3) Does anyone have any specific warnings, admonitions, praise etc. > regarding the other products I listed above? > (i.e. - ESQL/C, I-SQL, Informix Menus) They have been around for a long time. You should have no major surprises. >We'd appreciate any feedback we can get. Thanks ..........Tim Ward Good Luck Hal