Re: Best Front End for Oracle?

jfk wrote:
>
> Oracle Developers,
>
> Can anybody advise, what they would recommend as the best Front-End
> Application Builder is for an Oracle7 database.
>
> The database consists of 100+ tables and about 500+ data elements, the
> schema is also quite complicated.
>
> Any input would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Regards...JFK

Best is relative. It depends on what your most important criteria are.

If your criteria is to integrate with the database, it supporting toolsets and need to find people who are skilled in the database and the tools, forms is a good choice.
Forms two biggest weeknesses are it user interface is poor and the ridiculous quantity of bugs that have been in the product since the first 4.0 version.

If you want a tool that allows you to ramp up quickly, inexpensively and have a wide depth of talent available to help, Visual Basic makes some sense.
VB is its own worst enemy of course. Since it is so easy, there are a LOT of people programming in VB that shouldn't be. Even though there a lot of people who can code in it, extra care should be taken when staffing for such a project.

If you prefer a strong, structured environment, power builder also makes a case.
Powerbuilders biggest problems are that the learning curve is not small (although not excessive), and depending on your location you may have trouble getting adequate staffing.

My personal preferences are towards Forms for the tight integration with their tools and VB for its simplicity and support for n-tier development (we primarily develop object oriented 3 tier applications).

Todd Verstraten
mailto:tverstrat_at_tier3.com
http://www.tier3.com Received on Sun Dec 01 1996 - 00:00:00 CET