New Era vs. Powerbuilder vs. ???

Hi, I'm the I.S. Manager of a mid-sized company in GA. We have been using Informix 4.0 SE for many years. The time has come for us to upgrade and also our users are wanting a GUI interface. The plan is to: 1.upgrade our Informix to be more current, and we need BLOBS for image storage. 2. rewrite most of the software we have today, as there have been substancial changes in the way we do business. 3. Provide BOTH a GUI and a Character based interface for our users. It's this #3 where I am seeking information. I went to the Informix Southeastern Users Conference a couple weeks ago. They had a brief demonstration of New Era. It looks good, but I don't know what other things exist in the marketplace. I am looking for suggestions and contacts. I see from the thread running on this board that PowerBuilder would be an option. Who makes it? Can anyone tell me how to get more information? I'm also open to any oppinions on it. Are there other ways to build both a GUI interface while maintaining a character based screen. Also, if it plays into your oppinion, our staff does not have any experience with Object Oriented coding. We either need to get something 4GL-like -or- get training in Object Oriented code. Is one easier to learn than the other. Our environment is an IBM RS6000, running AIX, and XWindows. PCs running X-windows emulation (Exceed by Hummingbird). We just installed the XWindows and XWindows emulation to get ready for the GUI interface once it's build. Today the users are looking at character based screens through the emulation. Thank you for any input you might have. You can post responses or send them to me at "gibbs@mindspring.com" Tamar