Re: Client Server Suggestions.

>While you raise some good points, I can't quite agree with your
>conclusion.
>
>From personal experience, learning Visual Basic is no harder and is
>probably easier than learning Gupta SQL Windows (I have both here) and
>it is MUCH easier to obtain help for Visual Basic questions or find
>people familiar with VB than with Gupta. Further, VB is being used for
>hundreds of other Windows tasks so it is apt to show up on your
>Windows-based PC sooner or later anyway.
>
>The price differential is no small item either. To start with, there's
>an approximately $1800-2000 difference in the price of the products to
>begin with. And at $200/PC times 700 users, you're looking at a $140,000
>penalty for the poster. I've got over 3500 PC's to support -- that's
>$700,000 to me. Pity the outfit with 10,000 PC's!
>
>Plus, Gupta requires the creation of a dummy user and certain views of
>the system tables to make ORACLE look like SQLBase. Until those are
>created, you can't run anything! That may not be an issue IF you have
>DBA control of ALL the databases you want to access. If, however, some
>are elsewhere in the corporation, this may become an issue if the DBA of
>the "other" database isn't convinced of the efficacy of the approach.
>
>Gupta makes a fine product. I just wish it were more affordable.
>
>Bill Meahan |EFHD Information Systems Staff
>Plant Floor Systems Specialist |Ford Motor Company
>wwm_at_ef5003.efhd.ford.com | +1 313 487 6122
>..!fmsrl7!pmsmam!wwm |I'm not paid to speak for Ford!

Your point about the price diference is a very good one, but I still say to the original poster that in order to compare the two you really need to look at SqlWindows 4.0.

Depending on the development effort that they are engaging (considering 700 PC's it sound substantial), I feel SqlWindows 4.0 with it's Object Oriented Programming, Version control and source code repository would offer a team of programmers a much richer environment in which to create large client/server apps.

I will say that if Gupta expects a place with 700 PC's (let alone 3500) to pay $200 per PC for the Router without any kind of multiple license deal, then that is bullshit and would remind Gupta that even though they have a fine product they are not alone in the c/s market.

On the other hand, if you could get Gupta to "play ball" and get training on the product and use it to it's fullest, that would be a lot cheaper than a possible false start on a c/s app that lacks the tools or direction. It all really depends on the people developing the app.

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  //  markp_at_netcom.com             Mark Perreira           (510)889-3373   //
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