RE: Unix- HELP! Are we being bluffed?

Greg You are being bluffed! I would find another local dealer, they don't know there head from a hole in the ground. :We are a multi-branch retail company, Buildware Market, in South Africa. : We purchased Fourgen as the software to run our business, including aspects. :such :as point-of-sale, financials, stock control, etc. We are in the process of :implementing :the software at our first branch. Fourgen is written in Informix, which runs :on Unix. : :Our local dealer assures us that several things we thought were possible :are not possible. I'm not convinced, and I would appreciate some external :opinion. : :We want to link our office LAN (Microsoft Win for Workgroups) to the Fourgen :system :running on Unix. We are told that Win for Workgroups does not have suitable :terminal :emulators to log in to the Unix box, and that we need to purchase terminal :emulation :software called I-Net for EACH PC on the LAN, at a cost of US$235 per PC. :This sounds excessive. They have it all wrong. The only time you need I-Net is for client/server type products, Powerbuilder, Infomaker, ERWin, etc. What you need is software and hardware that allow you to talk to a Unix box normally. Cheapest example, but not a good on is a simple direct serial connection from the PC to the Unix box and a use a good terminal emulator, could be Windows or DOS based, and the right type of serial cable. Could be expensive, get a good TCP/IP stack for windows, some Telnet software, and network card and telnet to the Unix box. All you need is normal connectivity to the Unix box, Fourgen is character based, we do it all the time. :Furthermore, we are told that it is NOT possible to re-map keyboard keys. :Currently, the :Unix box uses F3 and F4 for Page up and Page down. We have purchased Wyse :terminals :that have a normal PC-style 101 key keyboard. We're told that we can not :re-map :the PgUp, PgDn, End, Home and other keys so that they would perform the :functions one :might expect in, say, a Windows application. This applies both to the dumb :terminals as well :as the PCs on the LAN. The key mapping depends on the terminal/telnet software you buy, and if you are willing to work with the informix termcap entries. :Does FourGen have any GUI which can act as a front end to users on a Windows :network? :Would X-Windows work with Fourgen & Informix? Are there any other ways to :operate :the Fourgen box via Windows? I am not aware of a GUI front end for Fourgen, but I am not an expert on there products. Yes, X-windows works with Fourgen, but just as a xterm charactered based app, like the terminal/telnet software above. I am doing this currently. I use some windows based X windows software and it works fine. :Another problem we have is that our Unix box operates VERY slowly. We have a :486DX2-66 :with 36MB ram & VESA local bus, 128KB cache, a 2GB SCSI-drive with fast SCSI :controller, :and a 2GB DAT streamer. We have the Informix Online engine, SCO Unix :(the latest version, I'm not sure of the number), and the latest version of :Fourgen Tools :(I think it's 4.12). When we only have four users logged on, and we're doing :purchase orders, :the system nearly grinds to a halt. Our item master consists of about 6000 :stock items, and we :have about 200 suppliers; so our database is not really that large. Why :could the system be so :slow? PLEASE help us with this, as we have to go live in about 2 weeks :time!!! (20 July is LIVE date) Our experience with fourgen was that the packages were slow, but there were not any indices in the original system we got. But even after the addition of indices, the process was still not as fast as we would have liked. :I have a further question: apparently a Unix drive can get fragmented just :like a FAT drive can. :How does one fix this? How does one tidy up all the fragments of mess that :may be lying around? Don't Know. :Any help greatly appreciated, and if you're in South Africa, we'll invite you :to our opening party, :which promises to be one to remember! :Greg Frank ===================================================================== Paul Watje Database Something or Another watjep@hasting.com Hastings Books, Music, & Video