Re: Oracle Development Tools Question

[Quoted] In answer to question 1:

Oracle Developer is an application development tool set, similar in nature to VB. You can create Forms based applications.

Oracle Designer is a modelling and development toolset. It allows you to completely model your company and design & build applications based on your [Quoted] processes and information requirements. Designer is a very sophisticated toolset that has complete generation capabilities. Having said that, there [Quoted] are certain circumstances when you shouldn't use Designer. One of these circumstances is for true enterprise modelling and enterprise architecture. Because of design decisions on Oracle's part, the object that is most likely to be shared and most requires sharing (business functions) is the only object that can't be shared. Also, while Oracle advertises the Designer repository as "extensible", their own instructors and support people will tell you that travelling down the path of user extensions is committing yourself to living with the current version of suffering through much pain in upgrades.

Designer can provide full generation and as a result give you fully documented, deployable apps if do all your work in Designer (definitely a bonus for folks in large companies with regular turnover). The only drawback is that if you make changes outside of Designer, your fully documented system can quickly become an semi-documented nightmare. Change management becomes critical.

Question 3: Designer can generate C++, VB and web-based (PL/SQL-OAS type) applications in addition to Oracle Forms & Reports. As for other development products, one of the products we are currently in the process of acquiring for web-based intranet developement is Cold Fusion. I'm sure there are many others that can interoperate with an Oracle database. I found Cold Fusion to be extremely easy to use and since it can use native SQL*Net or ODBC, it is database and platform independent (very important in [Quoted] my company, where there are two very determined camps, pro-MS and anti-MS).

[Quoted] I hope this answers some of your questions. Most likely, it just created more, which is usually the case whenever we embark on tool searches.

Joel

epicblue wrote:

> I am new to internet application development. I am in the process of
> gathering information on development tools and platforms. After
> reviewing the Oracle web site I am still confused as to the differences
> between their products.
>
> 1) What is the difference between the designer and the developer? Do
> you need both? Which product is actually used to create the front end
> that runs on the web browser? What about the java based development
> tools?
>
> 2) I understand the difference between a database server and an
> application server. However there is an Oracle Database Server and a
> WebDB. There is also an Application Server and a Developer Server.
>
> 3) Are there competing products that I should look into? Can I mix and
> match products from other vendors to do the development?
>
> Any info would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
Received on Fri Jan 21 2000 - 02:29:12 CET