Re: Opinions on 3rd party development tools wanted

"Scott Paterik" <spaterik@worldnet.att.net> wrote: :Does anyone have opinions on what tools such as Powerbuilder, Delphi, VB, :etc. work smoothly with an Informix DB. I'm outside our I.S. department :and doing independent decision making reporting, etc. I want to use :something other than 4GL or New Era, but don't know what. : :Thanks for any ideas. This depends a lot on your needs. All these tools work smoothly with Informix DBs. There are many users of each of them that have had good success. All of them (yes even VB) can be used for small and large applications. Delphi is probably the best of these as it seems to have the best implementation of object oriented programming and a very good RAD environement. They all have their problems though. Unless your server is Windows NT there is no way you can write server side programs (or partitions). (Yes PowerBuilder is available on some Unix platforms, but I wouldn't bet my bussiness on that.) Many (possibly most) database applications of any size can benefit significantly from running some parts of it on the server. With NewEra you can write server side programs or partitions of your program. I have heard some limitations to the partitioning functionality though. Another possible alternative is Forte if you can afford it. The last alternative is Java. It's now come of age sufficiently that you can test it and see if it fulfills your requirements. It's still such a young product that there are many pitfalls and some parts lacking that are available in other environements. It's developing very rapidly though, so it may be a good alternative for you. Look at Symantec Visual Cafe, Borland JBuilder and IBM Visual Age for Java and Informix Data Director for Java (add on tool to the others) for possible tools. (It's very important *not* to look at anything Microsoft is doing with Java of course.) Remember that with Java you can do standard MS Windows programs, applets that run in a web browser as well as server side programs and remote objects (multi tier programs), all with one language. 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