Re: sqlplus like utility for informix?

This strange posting passed me by, and I was now also tempted to simply ignore it. Some comments may however not hurt. > nawani@netcom.com (Mahesh Nawani) writes: > Nils.Myklebust@CCMAIL.telemax.no wrote: > : I don't know sqlplus and how that works. > : I do know that dbaccess must be one of the most primitive utilities arround. > : You can't even scroll backward, much less horisontally. > > : Have you tried MS Access. At this level it's query builder is a fine tool > : that works excelently with Informix databases for many purposes. There are > : of course several things you should be careful about, such as large datasets, > : fancy updates and so on. For query and analysis of releatively small datasets > : (to perhaps 100.000 rows) it works nicely for us. (We don't currently do > : updates at all via MS Access.) > > ha ha ha.... he he he.... > > Laughs, laughs,... > > > Are you trying to mislead this person or just tyring to prove that MS-Acess > is a better product... Neither, just suggesting a look at MS-Access to let the person decide for himself if it is usefull. > I don't know the utilisation of a "tool" like "sqlplus" has to Albert, but > you sure have brought out "features" about the product.. ????? I didn't think I said anything about sqlplus except that I don't know it ???? > No. I have not worked on MS-Access and never will. How can you know anything about how good any Informix product is when you will not even look at alternatives? No product can be evaluated out of context, meaning you have to look and compare. If company A has made a substantially better product than company B for your purposes, it is correct to say that company B's product isn't any good (for what you need to use it for). If a product could have been made much better than it is, you can also say it is not a good product. As to dbaccess it is a character based product which is easy to use for ad hoc SQL commands. Informix could however easily have implemented backward scrolling (in the result set of an sql select statement) and with little effort horisontal scrolling so you could see many records at a time even with many fields selected. This makes it not good, not a comparison to sqlplus. As to MS-Access it's very good for ad hoc query and looking at the result sets. The data is also extremly easy to move to other tools for further analysis. To make forms, including scrollable once with multiple records viewable at a time for ad hoc viewing of data is even easier than in ISQL. I wouldn't develop end user products with it. > But, as far as the original posting, I don't think dbaccess is cumbersome > product... Probably you are trying to put to much into the menu-driven > capabilities of it... Try using on the command line and it works the same way > sqlplus does... In fact you don't havce to invoke it in the similar > fashion as sqlplus... This may be what the original poster looked for, and a good solution in that case. > : Why Informix hasn't come out with a tool like this I don't know (not the full > : MS Access package, but a query builder with update functionallity to replace > : dbaccess). I haven't tried Viewpoint Pro lately. May be that is a reasonable > > what was that ;-) Query builder qith update functionality... I beleive > you are not fully aware of the Informix product line, else this will definitley > not asked... As you can see I did say ViewPoint pro may be an alternative. Randal Reha has since told me it more about it, and I am going to take another look soon. I am not aware of any other products from Informix in this category (Wingz and Hyperscript Tools was possibly in this category, but are no longer Informix products). Nils.Myklebust@ccmail.telemax.no NM-data, Dalsbergstien 7, N-0170 Oslo, Norway My opinions are those of my company