Re: Strw Poll : I-4GL for NT

I have to take issue with both Tim and Mike here. You have the whole market issue upside down. If I have an application created in Informix 4GL and my customers demand to use Windows NT, or they will not by it, I have a problem. If I haven't allready rewritten it in some other language so it will run on NT, it's highly likely it will take too long to do it now. If there is a way to make the 4GL application run on Windows NT with a simple recompile and possibly some minor tweeking that may be a good idea. Sure it will not be a true GUI application. That is not possible given the language. Sure it will not run as well as on Unix. The problem however is that nobody cares. The customer is not only king, he is God. You may argue with your customer, you may convince him Unix is better, he may agree totally, still he demands NT. Unix was only better from every technical aspect, not when all the other aspects where considered. Even if it where better considering all other aspects many customers may still demand NT. Not all of them are rational. If you are in such a position beeing able to deliver on NT now may be a life or death issue for your company and thereby partly for you. Of course you should immediately use all available resources to port to some other language. You can often use the same database layout, but rewrite the application. Your resources may however be meagre. Even if they are not it may take a long time. You may be able to rewrite some important parts of your application first, but need to be able to continue to run other parts in 4GL. These are the major considerations. I am at a loss to understand why you can't see it. I am equally at a loss to understand why you keep arguing about the benefits of Unix over NT. They may be many, but who cares if all, or even only some of your customers demand NT and you go out of bussiness. It's important to understand technical issues from a bussiness point of view. If you don't your bussiness may easily be hurt, and possibly even severly. From this perspective it's of course equally important to understand that 4GL run in a GUI environement can be nothing but a stop gap solution. If anybody expects to be able to sell 4GL applications running on Windows NT for an extended periode I thing they will be in for a rude awakening. Despite the above I sure hope to be able to do without 4GL on NT. 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