Re: Informix NewEra vs. other possibilities

Hi netters! > We are presently considering migrating from our current 4GL/alpha terminal > environment to graphical user interfaces (mostly PC/MSWindows, maybe also > Mac). The databases (Online) shall remain on our UNIX server, but the > applications would be migrated. Some trials with 4GL for Windows were > very unsatisfactory: Much too slow, unattractive user interface. [skipped...] > We have heard quite a few contradictory opinions and impressions about > NewEra, so I'd like to present the following questions to people > who have experience in this field: > > 1) What is the advantage of NewEra over other GUI tools with ODBC > access capability for Informix databases? > > (We don't know PowerBuilder, but what about VisualBasic/Visual C++? > May be even VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) together with > MS-Access/Excel/Word could do what we want and would be MUCH > cheaper.) When I implemented VB3.0 application that get and sent data from/to Informix Server via ODBC, I found out that there were some problems 1. I couldn't update or insert or delete data in Informix RDBMS by the native way (DataControl or RecordSet). It was nesseccary to use Execute or ExecuteSQL statements and to generate strings with SQL statements I was need. 2. The only way to insert a blob into a table was using external batch-file with ftp and rexec commands. > 2) How much work is involved in migrating a UNIX 4GL application to > NewEra? Can I just recompile the old code with some cosmetic > modifications, or is an almost complete rewrite necessary? A lot of work. I think the simplest way is to rewrite your application. NewEra and 4GL use different input/output functions. 4GL uses forms and menus, NewEra uses window classes. The biggest part of any program is input/output processing. BUT! I was said, that Informix hoped that a converter from 4GL to NewEra would appear (from third company, I wasn't said which one and when). It was said last October at Moscow Financial Forum of Informix. > 3) Has anybody converted 4GL applications into Windows apps using > non-Informix tools and programming environments, such as Visual > Basic or similar? What were your experiences, especially regarding > the time involved and the speed of the application at runtime? > > I'll contact Informix sales in Germany about more info on NewEra, > but it is always better to get info from "real" programmers and users > to compare that to the sales hype. We've implemented a big pilot project on NewEra and I think the product is very good. There are some little bugs (or features ? :-) ) in NewEra, but I think the bugs will be fixed soon. Moreover, INFORMIX SOFTWARE promises to implement alpha-numeric visual libraries, so in future you will have the same application for both GUI and alpha terminals (I don't understand the way GUI-applications can be ported to alpha terminals, but Informix promises :-O ). In any case NewEra will be ported to different hardware and OS, but VB and Excel etc are MS Windows applications and won't be ported to Macs, for example. The only real disadvantage of NewEra is that the product is very expansive. Bye. --------------------------------------------------------------- Andrew Yu. Grachyov | Phone +7 (095) 928-6078 TERN, Moscow, Russia | +7 (095) 928-4262 andy@tern.msk.su | Fax +7 (095) 280-3870