Re: Gateway to Progress

In article <173445@653.chatlink.com> Prosoft@sys653.chatlink.com writes: >Hello out there! I hope someone can help me with my problem. > >I'm trying to make a informix database server communicate with a >progress front end application & I'm having problems at the moment. If >anyone out there can give me any helpful suggestion pls. do so. I'm not surprised. Progress SQL sucks, so if you're using it you'll never get very far. I speak from bitter experience. Progress C-ISAM gateway accesses SE files directly, not via the SE engine. If you do this, you need your head read. You have just blown away all your dictionary-level referential integrity. That leaves ODBC. My experience is that Informix ODBC drivers are now pretty good in terms of reliability and speed. Progress' ODBC drivers are about where Informix ones were 12-18 months ago. In other words, very buggy and slow. I have Informix SE, INET, NewEra, VPPro, Delphi and Progress V7 and V8 on my development machines. I have had no success at all getting ODBC access to a Progress V7.2D server from ODBC-compliant clients but no problems accessing the SE 5.02 server using the same clients. The Progress V8 client GUI environment is very nice and productive, however. IMO more mature and robust than NE and far more capable than VPPro (mainly because VPPro nas no real 4GL). I have yet to try Progress ODBC Dataserver to Informix and have no faith in it working. If your problems are in the communications layer, a good 3rd party middleware product may be an answer. Feel free to email me if you think I can help. I've been using Informix since the 80's and am just finishing up a large Progress full GUI client-server database project. HTH, Peter Wiley PS: If you have to change either the client or server, change the client. Informix SE is so much more capable than Progress server, it's not funny. Online is more capable again. Once again, bitter experience.