Re: New Era: Your Opinion

I usually try to stay out of the firing line but felt I had to say something here! I don't like people being misled. Logic (logic@pavilion.co.uk) wrote: : calvinng@technet.sg (Calvin Ng) wrote: : :On Thu, 6 Jul 1995 15:21:04 GMT paul.d.finkel wrote: : :>I am the "project leader" (read: only guy left who knows the system) : :>for an 8-year-old SE app. It will be migrated to a new machine : :>(NCR34XX) and a new vers of UNIX and new version of Informix. : :> : :>My customer and I are attemtping to determine the expenses and : :>troubles involved in migrating to client/server. : :> : :>Here's the concern: our local Informix tech support guy, who has : :>been unfailingly helpful, has suggested moving the app to c/s with : :>Informix's New Era. He says it will be much easier than a total redesign : :>with Powerbuilder (for example). : :> : DON'T DO IT.... : I am a windows programmer (5 year) and I have this year move to a : company that has just started using NewEra. And I must say if your : looking for a windows client/sever system you would be better severed : by a any other program. It's window paint is slow and very basic, with : almost no useful controls at all. Two control type (SuperTables and : SuperFields) look like they will do all your work for you, Don't be : fooled for if you wish to do any thing other than doing a query by : example and display (with it does with no code) it is almost : impossible. They sell it by saying "It's full OO" with it is, To a Disagree!!! SuperTables & SuperFields, whilst they have some limitations (we have had to do one thing without them so far) provide a level of control and flexibility that is very impressive for a Version 1.00 product. The stuff we're doing is definitely not trivial either! : level that means the code to put some text on the screen (basic PRINT : command or a C printf command) will look like this. : Call ixApp::Window1_WN.Label192_LD.setText(new ixstring("Hello")) Firstly, assuming that you're using the ixTextBox class, the argument to setText is simply char(*) not ixString.... further more, I have yet to find a case where I have to qualify ixApp functions (ie ixApp::), intelligent use of object naming conventions will generally resolve that... speaking of naming conventions, surely you could dream up something better than Window1_WN.Label192_LD which the window painter probably came up with. Try it this way: Call CustomerWin.WelcomeLine.setText("Hello") You can even drop the CustomerWin if the particular piece of code is inside an extension to the ixWindow class.... Now is that really much harder than Visual Basic?? : and thats a simple one. True OO is great if you have five years to sit : and talk about how you program will interface with the growing : software development and five more year to write the code. My programs : due to be finished be the end of next week. We've been through this process of choosing a GUI development tool for windows/Informix client server and chose NewEra for the following reasons. 1) Database Performance: We could not find an ODBC implementation that ran as fast as NewEra over INet. 2) Ease of Database access. Database access (especially for simple things is VERY easy and straight forward in NewEra (ie Informix 4GL heritage). Visual Basic frustrated us greatly in this regard. 3) We felt that for a version 1.00 product (we now have 1.1) it was very robust so we felt confident about its future. 4) We gave some (though not too much) weight to the fact that it was an Informix product and we were already working with Informix Engines. So far we have been happy with our decision. NewEra does have its problems however (so what doesn't?). The cumbersome development environment stands out as one of these. Also its seems to be a bit of a resource hog for development purposes (I used to think MS-Access was bad!!). Yes there is also a limited number of controls available in the Window Painter. However, Informix promise us great things re this in the near future (Ver 2.00 in August I believe) including support for OCX's. If you would like me to answer some specific questions, feel free to email me. cheeers Scott.