Re: JWorks kills NewEra?

Jens Ebert wrote: > > Hi, we are considering taking NewEra for a new project. As the product > strategy of Informix was never very "stable" in the past, we are > concerned about the announcement of JWorks. Does Informix jump onto the Java > train? > > Any comments? > > Jens Jens, Informix has been quite stable actually, compared to others, i.e. Sybase ( trying not to laugh too loud :-) and Oracle are both playing catch-up. Sybase reminds me of Sam Neil in the movie Dead Calm, where he was caught underwater, and had to find a pipe to start sucking air with. Oracle is still not multi-threaded, and has a hodge-podge approach to building products. Of course there will still be people who want to work harder with a data base, and they'll pick Oracle or Sybase. I think if there's any complaining to be made with a perception of NearEra is that it walked like a duck but it was not a duck. It looked like a PowerBuilder or a Delphi, but it is a high-priced 4gl-replacement product for 4GL shops with a big investment in 4gl. This is what was explained to me a while back, by Informix people, at a newsgroup meeting. While NewEra was suffering miserably at the hands of people like me, Informix has been really putting some thinking behind Universal Server. Great battle minds. I hope I'm not sounding too co-dependent on them, but indeed, if you could've predicted the future, Informix hit it right on the money. Don't compare a GUI transition product like NewEra, against a total end-to-end product like Universal Server, and a Java environment like Jworks. If you recall the first iteration of NewEra, it was ahead of the pack but for a brief moment. If the actual product didn't really do much, the mere mention of it generated a great amount of interest, and hope for a real database GUI. It was/is proprietary. Java is not, so you really can't go wrong. Given that Java is mainstream, if Informix puts the same energy behind Java they put behind NearEra, we're going to see a true New Era. To answer your question, look at the white paper Netscape recently put out on their grand vision, and scroll down to Livewire. Put your energy in Java for the new stuff, and if you really think New Era is going to be around, well, go for it. You may want to check out corel.com to see why Java really does work--you too Billy! :-) And check this out from applix: http://www.applix.com/anyware/demo/demoscrn.htm ...the NC could actually work. -- Tim Schaefer \\\\|// tschaefe@mindspring.com (6 6) ------------------------oOOo---( )---o00o--------- Liberty: http://www.lp.org Informix: http://www.iiug.org --------------------------------------------------