Re: MS Access v's Visual Basic v's Forms5

Sorry it has taken me a while to catch up with what you posted. I just needed to make a couple of points in regards to your assessment of the MS Access v's VB v's Forms5 question. I agree whole heartedly with your comments on Oracle Forms. Possibly the biggest issue any of my clients has had with Forms is as you have suggested, they are not exactly Windows compatible.

Regarding your assessment of VB though, there are some things to note. VB does NOT have to be connected via ODBC. In fact Oracle Objects For OLE (OO4OLE) is often the reccommended means of connection and is in fact utilised by Des2000 in the generation of VB code. The performance characteristics of OO4OLE based applications are on a par with Forms and Reports. When you take into consideration that Forms, Reports and VB can be generated quite successfully from Des2000 and that the remaining programming effort is roughly equivalent, it comes down to two things: the desires of the client and the availability/cost of the resources. In the region in which I work, Forms/Reports look and feel just doesn't cut it with the users and VB skills are cheaper and more easily acquired anyway. VB also has the advantage of connecting easily via COM/DCOM to the rest of the enterprise product universe (generally HR and Finance products like SAP or PeopleSoft) and the flexibility that you already mentioned.

Having said all that, If you were already in an Oracle apps environment with Financials etc, Forms/Reports would probably be the way to go because your users would already be acclimatized and skills most likely available.

Regards,

Rod J Stewart

In article <3611E668.5390381A_at_u.washington.edu>,   mikkro_at_hbsi.com wrote:
> There are lots of reasons for using each tool.
>
> Generally, Oracle Forms (and Reports ) are more difficult to learn quickly (
> large amount
> of up front learning). My personal experience has been Forms are not exactly
> Windows
> compatible. It is based on Motif and has a slightly different methodology. The
> biggest
> advantages are speed and robustness. MSAccess and VB both are connected using
> ODBC. My experience is 10 fold SLOWER than direct access via SQLNet and
> Oracle tools like Forms, Report, and C. Forms has facility to support transfer
> of large
> record sets ie 10,000 or more records. Forms supports bringing limited number
of
>
> records at a time, so one does not have to wait for all the records to be
> transferred.
> Forms supports transactions explicitly. It allows one to edit many (1000s) and
> then
> undo this. It can be done in the other products, but at some cost.
>
> I have built Reports that in MS Access took hours that then took minutes in
> Reports. Access
> is quicker to develop that first report. However, Reports has more
sophisticated
> reports, with
> more complex outputs, incorporation of runtime alteration of the queries. I
have
> built queries
> that have different where clauses -- different variables, different values for
> fields, etc. This is
> not possible in MSAccess. After about 3 months, I could write a Oracle Report
as
> fast as
> anyone could develop an MSAccess report -- and mine ran faster. I generally
> wrote
> ad hoc reports in the ReportWriter tool.
>
> VB has more versatility do to the large programming options. However, there is
> not
> extensive support for things like field and row validation, PL/SQL, implicit
> support for
> master detail forms, etc. VB is a generic programming language. One can alway
> eventually
> recreate the functionality of Forms. However, think of the effort. Forms is
> probably
> 1000's of manhours or at least 100's of woman hours of programming. To
duplicate
> this
> one would have to do at least that much programming. Then you would have to
> build
> the product. Forms (and Reports) you are working on the product.
>
> The most significant factor against Forms is generally the cost of the
> development tools.
> The Forms tool is about $3000 per chair per OS. Runtime versions of the
> applications are free.
>
> Mike Krolewski
>
> Ray Dowling wrote:
>
> > We are currently evaluating development tools for corporate applications. We
> > would like a microsoft look at the desktop with the Oracle Server database.
> > I am confident that Oracle Forms5 will perform but it has been suggested
> > that we look to the Microsoft Products. I am concerned with 2 tier
> > architecture.
> >
> > We plan to use Des2K for repository. I believe it can generate Visual Basic.
> > How successful is this??
> >
> > Has anyone used the products with Oracle Server???
> > Are there any reference sites comparing the products (features, limitations
> > etc)????.
> >
> > Ray Dowling
> > E-mail Address(es):
> > rdowling_at_portbris.com.au
>
>

-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own Received on Thu Oct 08 1998 - 13:35:31 CEST