Re: Oracle Designer? pros and cons?

Hi!

I have been working with Designer (and its predecessor, Oracle Case) for 6 years, being part of a small development team that makes medium-sized
(20-100 forms) systems for several customers.

Designer has many advantages, as well as disadvantages.

Some disadvantages:
Designer has a reputation for being bug-infested. Admittedly, I have still not experienced a bug-free Designer version (nor any other large bug-free systems). But, Oracle or I have always found a workaround, so it has never stopped me from doing what I want. The major disadvantage is that it takes time to find workarounds. The people at Oracle Support in Norway are really doing a great job. I have noticed (on news) that this may not be the case in other countries.

It is a big investment for small companies, but considering its functionality, I don't find it expensive. Of course, I'm not the one paying for it... :)

The learning curve is long (or high?... whatever), so you really must consider it a long-term investment. Once you start making your applications with Designer, you won't easily switch.

It may be hard to find experienced Designer users when you are considering expanding your development team, at least it is so in Norway. They are too few, and often well-paid where they currently work. This, of course, may be to your advantage when you have accomplished expert knowledge on Designer
(Don't tell your boss :))

Reports generator: I think Designer is still not good enough here. We define our reports in Designer, but we finish the job in Developer. Our customers are quite active in their quest to find new ways to look at their data, so we usually create a small set of mandatory reports, and recommend Discoverer for ad-hoc reporting. This works fine with our customers.

Graphics generator: We have still to make any graphics applications, but I believe that you will have to do some work in Developer for Graphics applications, too.

Data modelling: True, there are other tools that are better at data modelling. Few of these takes care of your whole product lifecycle.

Designer is still too much oriented towards in-house development. It takes some careful planning (not very time-consuming, though) to handle customer-specific database sizing and tailored modules.

Advantages:
Our metadata (Designer's data) is stored in a repository in an Oracle database. This ensures consistency. The repository is public. We have used this fact to make our own repository reports, which has helped us much in ensuring that we have implemented all the business rules (see CDM, below).

With Designer 2.1, Oracle introduced a broadcast server, so each team member is informed instantly about other team member's updates to the repository.

Forms generator: It is possible to create complete systems without doing any Developer work on specific forms. However, you may not be able to do everything the way you want if you restrict your development to Designer. Also, you will have to create your libraries in Developer, and probably also investigate the code generated by Designer, to find out what's really going on. Once finished, however, you're able to generate all your forms without touching Developer.

It is my belief that without using Designer, we would have needed a larger
(+50% ?) development team to accomplish the tasks that we have. In
particular;

Templates, GUI standards, getting started: Once you have defined and tested your template(s), you will find that creating new forms is really fast. Also, if you decide to change some of your standards, you may generate all your forms in one go (each form should take less than a minute to generate, depending on the complexity).

Designer takes care of all your development needs - data modelling, function modelling, site-specific server implementation (including stored pl/sql), and, not least, you may do all your development documentation in Designer. Unlike most other products, it takes handles all of your product's lifecycle.

I recommend that you take a closer look at Designer. Visit someone who is using it or take an introductory course to Designer. In Norway, this course is a 5 day course called Oracle Designer Rel. 2 First Class.

If you decide to go for Designer, I recommend that you take a closer look at CDM (Corporate Development Method? ... I'm not quite sure). This is a method for structuring your development and documentation through the use of Designer. An Oracle representative should be able to tell you more. We recently began using this, and it really opens your eyes about what you can do with Designer.

Good luck!

Roy Brokvam
roy.brokvam_at_conax.com Received on Wed Feb 24 1999 - 10:14:34 CET