Re: Forms 4.5 vs Powerbuilder

: >We are a ORACLE SQL*Forms IS shop and are evaluating Powerbuilder as an
: >alternative to building client-server apps. Has anyone out there gone
: >through this evaluation process? Would anyone like to comment on
: >your company's selection of Powerbuilder over SQL*Forms.

I just went through the process myself. Similar deal. Powerbuilder is probably a better fit if you want to put something together quickly that looks nice. Not a bad product for long term maintenance, either. Nice qualities and a pleasure to use.

The Oracle product is quite powerful, operating at a somewhat higher level than PB. It has more overhead per user for small-scale production environments, plus has the annoying run-time fee consideration. It appears to get more efficient as you scale it up to the so-called enterprise level (eg hundreds of users and more). This notion is supported by an acquaintance of mine who works for Oracle. On a smaller scale, he felt that PB was normally a better fit.

At my last project, there were lots of character-based clients. Windows is the coming thing and the mandate was to support them, and X as well, so Oracle Forms looked pretty good. Client base was expected to be in the thousands.

Another important consideration is application partitioning. Oracle Forms uses pl/sql, as does the server for stored procedures, functions and triggers. It's not a bad thing to have a single language on both the server and the client, and app. partitioning becomes a breeze. And, if you are going to do much with Oracle and really try to take advantage of the client/server technology, server-based logic will be important.

I really admire both products. At decision time, I expressed a fairly neutral opinion and the customer chose PB. Probably because it was cheaper. Not a bad decision in this case, since it is a smallish project. When all other factors are equal, I go with the price.

Roger Received on Wed Jun 07 1995 - 00:00:00 CEST