Re: [Q] JAM6 vs Oracle Forms, which one?

In article <D4x7C9.14y_at_fritz.snafu.de>, Ernst Kloecker <ernst_at_fritz.snafu.de> wrote:
>>Has anyone used or compared JAM6 or Oracle Forms for software development?
>
>I have used both and found them both terrible in their own way.
>
>Since about half a year I have been using PowerBuilder which is by far
>better than JAM or Oracle Forms.

Unfortunately it is really difficult to predict which product will be most successful without a lot background info. With respect to the poster, I have had excellent results with the Oracle products over the years, but I acknowledge that there are many cases where I could see PowerBuilder being more effective. Personally, I think that the merger of PowerBuilder with Sybase bodes ill for Oracle developers using the product, just as I am certain that Rdb developers are quite queasy over the new arrangement with Oracle.

To be more specific, Oracle Forms and Reports are highly optimized to work with the Oracle rdbms (indeed, at least until recently, that's all they worked with). This has a significant impact on how much work a developer will have to do with regard to query optimization, shared memory, and other tuning issues. In addition, the Forms packages have provided far more portability across client platforms. Bottom line (for me), if you are working in an Oracle environment and are relatively certain that for the medium term you're going to continue to work in the Oracle environment, and other things being equal (cost, support, etc), you are better off with Forms. If you suspect that you may need to move away from Oracle, or you have to combine Oracle and non-Oracle data sources, you are probably better off with another product (although whether PowerBuilder, Jam, Delphi or whatever is still a difficult decision to make).

Just my $.02.

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Jack F. Love
Opinions expressed are mine alone, unless you happen to agree