Re: Please recommend me a DB!
Date: 1996/05/17
Message-ID: <319c879e.286081_at_news.shore.net>
On Wed, 15 May 1996 21:22:10 -0400, Benjamin Taub <btaub_at_dspace.com> wrote:
>Regarding the report writers, who do you have in mind. A division of one of our clients
>is really hooked on Progress. They have been looking for a report writer and have come
>to the conclusion that none supports native Progress (except, perhaps, the older IQ
>which seems about to be replaced by the newer IQ objects). To use all the standard
>report writers they have to use ODBC. The problem is that Progress' current ODBC driver
>is quite flaky. A new one is supposedly due out soon but this does highlight the
>somewhat 'closed' nature of the Progress environment.
>
>On the other hand, Progress developers do seem quite 'hooked' on the product so it must
>do some things really well. These developers strike me as very similar to the
>"Macintosh Bigots" that many of us have encountered. You know, "If it's not a Mac it's
>not allowed into my department." Perhaps the 'Mac Bigots' were right about the
>technology but, are they still employed?
>
We apologize for sending this to those of you who may not be interested. However since Benjamin's article was sent to the database world, we felt that our response should go there as well to correct any misconceptions. And particularly, since we also feel that Progress has not been as effective as their competitors in tooting their own horn. Benjamin please take no offense as none is intended.
We'd like to shed a little light on your comment about categorizing Progress developers in the same class as "Macintosh Bigots". We do not consider ourselves as members of a cult but rather as professional system developers. We initially chose and continue to choose Progress as our primary development tool for the following reasons.
Progress does a lot of things really well. In over ten years of working with Progress, we've never had a client lose a database, or even a significant chunk of one. We can put it in environments where users are less than rigorous about backups with a feeling that the database will survive despite the user. That's a nice level of comfort to have about a database product.
We can't speak for other developers, but in our experience, Progress applications scale up well. We can develop in a single user environment and deploy on just about any Progress platform. As long as we follow some simple guidelines for record locking and understand the deployment client hardware, we have no trouble going from single user to multi-user. We have found other packages do not scale up with this ease, one particularly memorable experience being with a Paradox application we inherited. In addition, we have always be able to fine tune our application's performance with relative ease.
As old IBM mainframe Assembler programmers, we like the Progress language. We have used other 4GL products, which invariably want to force us to do things their way or else. We've never had that feeling with Progress. Only once in the ten years that we have been developing in Progress have we had to code application functionality as an external call to a "C" program and since V7, we could have coded that in Progress. Now when we find that we are *fighting* with the Progress language, it's usually an indication that we don't understand a feature of the language well enough. Using Progress for Windows, it's easy to make most kinds of DLL calls and to use DDE to access MS Word, Excel and other DDE apps.
Progress 4GL does have some shortcomings, as most of us who work with it are aware. You have hit on one of those - reporting. At the present time, an end user can't create a report on a Progress database with the ease of Access, for example. The current state of ODBC drivers is another shortcoming, although there are third party products available.
In our experience, Progress Software Corporation(PSC) has been very astute at deciding where to put its development resources and which direction to take the product. We've seen very few misdirections on their part, and we've been watching them for over ten years. The acquisition of its Crescent Division with its leading library of VBX functionality and technology strengthens their market position and has resulted in the addition of a richness to the V8 product needed for GUI development. The Progress V8 component based SmartObjects product for GUI development is written in the 4GL. PSC has made the SmartObjects source code available and is encouraging developers to extend the functionality.
We do look around at other products from time to time. This is our livelihood and we don't want to become extinct. We have done work with Visual BASIC, Visual C++ and others, but we do most of our work in Progress because of the "crash-proof" database, the excellent 4GL, the Rapid Application Development and the "bang-for-the-buck" we can give our clients when using Progress.
Another point to ponder is that Progress has been the number 1 pick in VAR surveys for the last several years as reported in VARBusiness Magazine's Annual Report Card. The annual report card surveys value added resellers to determine their preferred SQL Database/Development Tool vendor. Progress won its victory over competitors including, Microsoft, Informix, Lotus, IBM, Oracle, Cognos, Computer Associates, Sybase and Gupta. Progress Software earned the highest overall score in the SQL Database/Development Tool category, winning the partnership category and tying for first in product/pricing and support. This came after winning the VARBusiness Product Report on Client/Server GUI Programming Tools, beating out Microsoft, Powersoft, Unify, Gupta, and Sterling Software.
Roger Olney & Jerry O’Neill
Future Computing
P.O. Box 751 Rowley, MA 01969
Bus:(508) 948-2731 FAX: (508) 948-8420 Email: future_at_shore.net Received on Fri May 17 1996 - 00:00:00 CEST