Re: Delphi 2.0 vs. Powerbuilder 5.0

Personally I think Delphi is great product and I think many companies are going to copy the good bits of it (witness PowerSoft's Optima++). I haven't seen Delphi 2.0 but I know that it is supposed to be even better (but no 16 bit apps). However it appears to be very weak in the reporting area. This may change, but I have heard a fair bit of moaning about Crystal Reports and ReportSmith (which aren't really integrated anyway). I am not sure about QuickReport which seemed to offer some hope. I also hate having to using the Borland Database engine when you have an otherwise very streamlined application. However the BDE seems to work OK.

PowerBuilder is very strong in the database connectivity area but most importantly its integrated reporting is very strong. I haven't seen many products that equal them. On the other hand resulting applications are very large, quite slow and a lot less elegant (Yes, I know PB5 solves some of this but I have yet to be convinced). I tend to use PB consistently and not Delphi because it does provide a more complete solution. I am also a lot more comfortable with PB as I have used it a lot more.

I don't know a lot about Oracle Developer 2000 or whatever it is called now but I try to steer clear of anything but their database. They seem to be very good at selling and pretty good at their core business of database engines but have a hard time with all the other stuff.

If the reporting and database connectivity of Delphi were clearly resolved I would almost certainly go for Delphi.

These are my opinions and not necessarily those of my employer.

Iain Stafford

> gkfar_at_telerama.lm.com (Ghost Rider) wrote in article
 <4qusnj$qgq_at_scramble.lm.com>...
> I was wondering which one would be better to use for a large database
> application with Oracle? At first I thought that Delphi was better, but
 then
> Powerbuilder came out with version 5.0, which is supposed to be as good
> as Delphi 2.0. Does anyone have any incite as to which is better and
 what
> some of the more important differences are?
> Thanks in advance,
> Gary
>
>
Received on Tue Jul 02 1996 - 00:00:00 CEST