Re: Comparisons of SQL/Windows and Ingres OpenRoad wanted

Jerry Nichols (NicholsJ_at_LFGMS.LOGICA.COM) wrote:
: In article <youngn-2306951321030001_at_158.234.17.99> youngn_at_logica.co.uk (Nicholas Young) writes:
 

: >If anyone has an experience with both of these tools, I'd be grateful for
: >any info on how they compare with one another. I'm trying to determine
: >which to recommend to a client, probably with an Oracle database.
 

: As a result of the desktop strategy work I've been doing for Barclays (a major
: Ingres user) I've seen some of the results of OpenRoad. Here are some of the
: bad points:
 

: - No DDE support
: - No OLE support
: - No clipboard support
: - No ODBC support
: - No VBX support
: - No OCX support

I believe you can get lots of the above functionality using a package originally developed by ASK in the UK. In terms of ODBC, it is not too difficult to add a user class of your own. Even I could do it. You don't have to be an engineer to use the product as documented.

: The only way of integrating is via DLLs (which it does support). OpenROAD's
: main development platform is now Windows NT (it used to be UNIX/Motif), but it
: has only recently made the transition and as a PC-based GUI tool it looks
: pretty awful. VB, Delphi, SQLWindows have far better development environments.
: Now the good points:
: - ummmm, I'm sure there were a couple

I've been playing with SQLWindows for a couple of months now. In terms of its usability, it is not as intuitive as OpenROAD. Gupta is not as O.Oriented. as it sells itself to be. Instead of calling object methods, you have to call global functions to do everything from convert strings to disable a button. SQLWindows is very event driven. This is quite good about the product, but you do need to work with an event driven approach when coding. Not so for OpenROAD where you structure everything around your frames/objects etc.

OpenROAD uses SQL as part of the application code. You don't call a function to open a handle and then call functions to fetch rows into your objects (always remembering to keep a track of the handles of your table fields etc).

SQLWindows is much closer to windows (a good point). It has a good front end but bug fixes for product deficiencies do tend to come with the next version. At least you get your bug's fixed as a matter of course with OpenROAD.

To compare the two products is like comparing Ingres and Oracle. It depends on the application you want to write as to what kind of environment you will use. If you want platform independance and like the idea of running your apps on Oracle or SQL Server on any major OS under any Major windows manager, then give OpenROAD a look. I've seen some pretty snazzy OpenROAD demos using multimedia features written to work on both Unix and Windoze and you don't have to run different exe's. The same file will run on both (developed on either).

On the other hand. SQLWindows has these things called QuickObjects that are written very OO like. They are very sexy and very easy to use. The only problem is speed. I have a Pentium-90 at home 32Mb that runs everything I know so fast, it is usually finished running before I start it :> Except a Quickwindows app. I don't expect to see any pauses in any app containing 1 screen on a beast like that but I swear it runs like a 386 20Mhz with 8Mb of memory. I have spoken to a Gupta Guru (from Gupta) who swears this is a Quickobjects problem. No problem, use the product without Quickobjects. Very speedy but needs loads of coding. Many of the object attributes need to be set at run time (with function calls).

In some respects Visual Basic has advantages over SQLWindows. I won't go into the pro's and cons of these two but just introduce it to show that every product has loads of advantages over the rest.

Quick summary? Work out what application you need to build. Buy OpenROAD if it gives you what you need and has definite advantages over the others. Buy Gupta if *it* does (and stick it on top of Ingres)... They're both good products used in the right environments.

Hope this helps

Jon

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