Suggestions for alternative Development Environment

From: John Edwards <jedwrs_at_yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 2 Jul 2002 20:28:49 +0100
Message-ID: <3d21fef2_3@mk-nntp-1.news.uk.worldonline.com>

Hi,
just looking for a few pointers on alternative development environments.

A colleague of mine has prototyped a small but useful application using oracle forms and running against an oracle database. I think the application has potential to be more widely adopted but not as an Oracle Forms/DB application as Oracle is just too heavy and over the top for this application.

Can anyone suggest an alternative development environment. The application only uses 10 tables and 6 views. It has 4 stored procedures which the developer says could easily be designed out if necessary. Basically all of the application logic and business rules are stored in the form.

Requirements
* Ideally it would great to develop in an environment where the end result
could be run as a standalone application with the end user having no knowledge or sense of a database running at the back end of it.

ODBC to any compliant database if the user has the technical ability and chooses to take the extra step to set this up.
Web Aware - ie a version of the application could easily be built that would run inside a browser window and read/write all its data from a web based database server.
Simple Installation - something like the 'Wise Installation Wizard' with the user just jollying the install process along by clicking 'Yes' to all the prompts.
Small footprint - something with a huge footprint like oracle would kill this idea stone dead - it is a simple idea and just doesn't require that huge sledgehammer overhead. The final application plus embedded database should really stay within say 20Mb and not require the additional installation and setup and maintenance of supporting software/runtimes etc.

I know the above is a very general, wide and baggy brief but all suggestions and pointers are welcomed. Up until 4 years ago I was an Oracle Application Developer but I now work in another industry. The development landscape has changed completely since I was working in it and so a few pointers would be most welcome.

Thanks in advance for all suggestions.

JED. Received on Tue Jul 02 2002 - 14:28:49 CDT