Re: HELP: Please help, what client-tool to use for developing client-server applications?

Savas Pavlidis wrote:
>
> Prior of buying, and most of all dedicated to one client tool for
> developing client-server applications, I would like the comments of
> users who already have the experience of more than one to make a
> comparison among them.
>
> In my company we are thinking of moving from our COBOL legacy system
> to client-server. Observed several rdbms, and settled to Oracle or
> Sybase, because they have good support here in Greece. The problem
> aroused for the tools. Oracle wants to use their products
> (developer2000 and designer2000) which seems good at spec, but we have
> heard numerous things for them (they GPF, they are heavy, they are
> slow etc) but one main thing that made us give a second thought, it
> was their price, which is very expensive (at least here in Greece,
> where salaries are too slow compared to US for example). On the other
> end, Sybase moves its Powerbuilder, for which I heard also same things
> as an immature product too, and slow. In usenet several users propose
> other products (Delphi, Jam etc) which makes the situtation even worse
> for us to decide. We are only two (2) developers, and our budget is
> low, so we can't afford the money and most of all the time, to test
> every possible platform (or even some of them) before we decide. And
> because the time invested on one tool, plus the money for education on
> this would be too much to later abandon,
>
> WE WOULD LIKE YOUR OPINIONS PLEASE !!!!!
>
> We seek the opinions of developers who tried more than one of the
> products (Developer2000/Designer2000, Powerbuilder/S-Designor, Delphi2
> C/S, VisualBasic, Jam etc ) and can give their opinions. Some notes of
> the strengths of their preferred tool that is not available on others
> is highly prefered.
> Also sites with documents which compare various tools would be
> helpful.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Please reply also by e-mail, because I may miss the post, due to IBM
> which has a lot of problems with it's news servers the last year.
>
> Savas Pavlidis
>
> pavlidis_at_ibm.net

Hi Savas,

Or is that SaveAs?

Congratulations!

You have waited so long to migrate your mainframe applications that the older Windows/Novell client/server paradigm has passed on and been replaced by a new one: client/server on the World Wide Web. Even better, client/server on the Web works in a manner very similar to the way your mainframe apps work!

Since you have all that nice working COBOL code and you have resisted the shift to client/server so many years, why don't you do the reasonable thing:

1. get MicroFocus's (or some other vendor's) web-enabled COBOL compiler,
2. Use Oracle if you wish, or you can get free or almost free Relational DBMS on the web(mySQL, miniSQL, etc).
3. migrate your legacy COBOL apps to UNIX-(LINUX is free!) or NT-based servers running a corporate intranet.
4. while doing this, fix your year 2000 date problems.

That way, your 2 programmers can concentrate their effort on the year 2000 problem, and you can lower your application support costs.

Unfortunately for most of us, COBOL is

1. the de facto business language and
2. sadly, has very good text manipulation capabilities, a requirement for Web development.

I say "unfortunately" because we've all been busy studying C++, Java, JavaScript, PFC, Eiffel(anyone?).

Combine this with the fact that almost everyone will find it impossible to avoid _some_ work in COBOL due to the upcoming Year 2000 conversion(and the high wages to be paid), and you have a rather unpalatable conclusion:

By the year 2001, most of us will be working in COBOL on web-based applications!
Remember, you heard it first here, in comp.soft-sys.powerbuilder Aaargh!

Good Luck,
Michael D. Kersey Received on Wed Apr 02 1997 - 00:00:00 CEST