Re: Does Oracle + VB is a good combination

Comments inline:

vincent delft wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I must set-up an application with an Oracle Database running on Unix and a
> GUI running on Windows 2000/XP machines.

Good enough so far

> The size of the DB is about 5GB.

Not an issue, other than you will probably get lazy about doing proper design and administration. Five GB is a small corner of one disk these days.

> The application will have about 1000 users and about 200 concurrent users
> connected via a WAN.

Now you are taking about an interesting, but not terribly significant, load for a small server.

>
> My management propose the combination Oracle - ODBC - Visual Basic.
>

This sounds like the last time management woke up was somewhere in the late 1990's

Who will pay for installing the software on 1000 desktops? Who will manage the software for 1000 desktops? With a web deployment, there is nothing to install at the client's machine. Much, much less expensive over 2-3 years!

ODBC has a tradition of being slower than direct connect and using only common features - you are probably paying for database power that you simply will not be able to use.

> Does this will be stable and reliable enough ?

From the network back through to, and including the database, yes.

I haven't had good luck with big VB projects in a networked environment, but that's usually a function of the developers not knowing how to code something more robust than prototype.

By default, each VB project [used to] install it's own core DLLs (and many commercial products are VB), and there was nothing that guaranteed the DLLs being installed were compatible with your project. 90% of all my Windows instability issues can be traced to DLL 'upgrades'.

> Must I propose an another architectur ? (PowerBuilder ?, Java ?, ...)

Why not propose Oracle's web architecture? Or just plain HTML? Or maybe Oracle's Portal? Getting everything from one vendor means you can usually solve bug issues instead of having the vendors fighting about who is responsible.

> Does web based application can be cheaper (to build and maintain) than VB ?
>

In general, yes. Especially when you include code that does proper error checking and exception handling, and when you include the cost to roll-out production initially and the cost to roll-out bug-fixes and upgrades.

Using VB however, the initial prototype is very cheap.

> Thanks for your feedbacks.
 

-- 
/Hans
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