Re: Forms v. Oracle Power Objects

In article <838675033snz_at_chigtow.demon.co.uk>, steve_at_chigtow.demon.co.uk wrote:

> In article <31FCC7B1.53E6_at_erudite.com> shawno_at_erudite.com "Shawn
 Odekirk" writes:
>
> > I thought I heard a rumor that Oracle was abandoning development of Forms in
> > favor of Oracle
> > Power Objects. Is there any truth to this?
> > How do the two products relate to each other? What are the relative
 strengths
> > and weaknesses
> > of each?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Shawn
> >
>
> In personal oracle 7 forms 4.5 is part of Power Objects.
>
> There are Objects of all standard oracle entities eg, Fields,
> tables, forms, reports, users, views etc etc
>
> --
> STEPHEN LEONARD ROBERTS
I have no inside knowledge about Oracle's development plans, but I doubt that Forms (and therefore Developer/2000) is going away any time soon. Currently, D/2000 is way more powerful than Power Objects (OPO). All of Oracle's financial and manufacturing applications are written in it. I haven't seen OPO 2.0, but 1.0 has no team development tools, no way of partitioning applications, a lame report writer and graphics package, no support for PL/SQL, and lame integration with server side code. D/2000 has all of these, which are each useful if not necessary for large applications. Also, OPO does not run on motif or character.

OPO is great (better than D/2000, IMHO) for small applications, though. It's much smaller, easier to learn and use, includes some object technology, and has a database built in. I'd love to see OPO get equiped to take over the role of D/2000, but I can't see it happening for a while. I am intrigued though, why hasn't anyone from Oracle responded to the rumor post?

"In personal oracle 7 forms 4.5 is part of Power Objects." This is not true (and is even difficult to parse). These are three separate products. PO7 is a database only. Forms 4.5 is one part of Designer/2000. OPO is a front end tool with a lame integrated database (Blaze).

The confusion probably arises because there are objects in OPO called "Forms," but they have nothing to do with the Oracle product called Forms 4.5, and while you can connect to a PO7 database with OPO, OPO is not part of PO7.

Mike Kranzdorf              mikek_at_krt.com
Kranzco Realty Trust        http://www.krt.com