Re: INFORMIX WISH LIST

On Mon, 16 Jun 1997 10:39:30 -0500, Richard Stanford <richards@herald.net.REMOVE> wrote: >On Mon, 16 Jun 1997, Mike Jagdis wrote: > >> Tim Schaefer said >> >> >I was told last year by Informix folk down south ( Ft. Lauderdale ) that >> >New Era was primarily a migration product for shops with a big >> >investment in 4GL wanting to move to GUI. >> >> So if you don't have a big investment in 4GL you are better off >> rewriting in something non-Informix? :-) > >I'd say so. Just because Informix can write a good DBMS, it doesn't follow >that they're good language designers. More to the point, the extra time it >takes to teach a developer a new language is (or should be) minimal if you're >going to teach them how to develop using event-driven and (maybe) OO code. > >Personally, I kinda like 4gl for text mode applications, but it /is/ limited. >IMO, this is a good thing -- I'm getting more than a little sick of some of >the 'kitchen-sink' type application development systems. If you need cross- >platform graphical development, great. If not, 4gl really isn't that bad. > >-Richard I'd really like to see 4GL stick around for a while longer. We have 30-40 users, many of whom are primarily data-entry personnel. For us, SE and 4GL with dumb terminals is all we need. I don't need a GUI, and, while FourGen is also a dated product, it provides a useful framework for many of our programming needs. What I would really like to tell our owners, however, is that 4GL will connect with any major vendor's database, even if we had to use dynamic SQL to do so. Then I could tell our owners that our development tools are as open as our database. We are just approaching completion of a migration from a DEC mini-computer. For a variety of reasons, this conversion has been going on since 1991. Informix could make my life much better if I could tell my boss that 4GL had another 5-7 years of being a competitive product. As things stand, I have no idea how soon Informix is going to dump it onto the scrap heap. Regards, John Prideaux alastl@ctnet.net John Prideaux voice: (217)839-2121 email: alastl@ctnet.net Aladdin Steel, Inc. fax: (217)839-4327 alastl@ix.netcom.com Route 16 East Gillespie, IL 62033 My opinions are not those of Aladdin Steel, Inc.