Hello,

I'd like to know what is better for GUI development against ingres db:
VisualBasic under .net or OpenRoad 4.1



Piotr Wi¶niewski

On 19 Dec 2003 08:15:53 -0600, Piotr.Wisniewski (AT) breat (DOT) com.pl wrote:
Piotr:

They both work. No one can possibly tell you which is better without
understanding what you are trying to do. If this is a troll, please
take it elsewhere. If it is a serious inquiry, set out your
parameters.

--Kent
=================================
Kent Smith * IPSO Incorporated
Business * Technology * Solutions
Financial Services and Accounting Systems Consulting

http://www.ipsoinc.com

"Kent Smith" <ksmith (AT) ipsoinc (DOT) com> wrote

Piotr is a regular here; surely there is no reason to suppose he tolling?
(Apart from it being Friday.)

It's hard to beat OpenROAD for productivity if it is used properly. But it
isn't often used properly IMO. Some of the very worst systems I've ever
seen were written in OpenROAD. It really doesn't impose enough discipline
on the programmer and almost completely fails to exploit Ingres fully.
Visual BASIC is even worse in that respect.

I am not thrilled with either of them. They are both 1980s technology. But
in the absence of anything a bit more 21st Century, if OpenROAD is even on
your radar, it is the lesser of two evils IMO.

Roy Hann (rhann at rationalcommerce dot com)
Rational Commerce Ltd.
www.rationalcommerce.com
"Ingres development, tuning, and training experts"

On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 17:13:34 +0000 (UTC), "Roy Hann"
<rhann (AT) globalnet (DOT) co.uk> wrote:

Yeah, I recognized Piotr's name as well; it was more to forestall
anyone from reading it and starting a religious crusade on behalf of
one tool or another. I HATE that.

And this really distills the argument here - it depends on what you
know. If you know VB, you will be more productive in VB; if you know
OR, you will be more productive in OR. But you can do truly awful
things with both tools. I suspect that technically they are not
really distinguishable; the real difference is economic. If you want
to pay extra for the tight Ingres Integration, go OR. If you are
willing to do a little extra coding to save some cash, go VB.

They are really tools aimed at slightly different markets. Which
market are you in? Or are you in the overlap area?

--Kent
=================================
Kent Smith * IPSO Incorporated
Business * Technology * Solutions
Financial Services and Accounting Systems Consulting

http://www.ipsoinc.com

..Net is by no means 1980s technology. VB.Net has familiar syntax, but
that's about all. As has already been said, without knowing what Piotr
needs, no comment on advantages / disadvantages can be made. Although
I can say that if you wanted to go with .Net, you'd want a native
Ingres ADO.Net provider first. You can try to find a third party
provider or wait (and wait) for CA to release one.

Christian.

Piotr is today out of office, so let me 'set parameters'

We are looking for a application development environment, that will:
1. Expand capabilities of our system (now based mainly on ABF appications)
2. Replace it in the future.
3. Integrate with windows
4. Interchange data with other applications (f.e. MS Office)
5. Have a "low" TCO, and cost of deployment.
- As far as i know I have to buy OpenRoad Runtime for every single
client machine - so it gets deployment cost quite high

So - what do you think?

--
Regards,
Artur Fajok

I did a document once that compared 3 front ends
CA Opal (because CA were pushing it)
CA OpenROAD (it seemed a more sensible option)
VB (they used a lot of MS products)

VB was by far the cheapest option
Opal was very expensive and had problems
OpenROAD was the easiest route as they knew ABF

.....but now they have taken Oracle as a standard

On 23 Dec 2003 00:35:34 -0800, michaelnewport (AT) yahoo (DOT) com (michael
newport) wrote:
And the same still holds true. Developing in .NET (which is where you
would start if you chose today) will cost you $800 per developer plus
learning costs. The .NET development environment includes VB, C#, and
ASP.NET, providing you with a development environment that covers all
of the Windows bases. You will have a much easier time finding
developers, and the development support out there is much greater.
BUT. It isn't a database development environment (you can certainly
USE it against a database, but it isn't DESIGNED to be used against a
database), it is a general development environment.

OpenROAD will be a very easy transition from ABF/4GL. The language is
extremely similar, and you will recognize the structure immediately.
It is designed to work against databases, so it has some great
connection handling features and is very easy to use. BUT. IT will
cost you a lot more. You pay either by seat or by server, and in
either case you will be paying considerably more. You also can't take
the development environment home on your laptop without a database
installed there as well. Remote development is more difficult (or
expensive).

Some thoughts (in no particular order):
o Both products will handle 1-4 of your points. You will need to
talk to CA about #5.
o The community of VB developers is significantly larger. The
loyalty of the OR developers is much greater.
o Your training costs will be lower with OR, but deployment costs
will be higher.
o You can get development support from CA with OR, with VB (or .NET)
you will have to rely on the larger development community.
o CA admits to (and fixes) OR bugs. Microsoft does not admit to
bugs, although they may fix them in service packs.
o The Microsoft knowledgebase is way better than the CA
knowledgebase.

Good luck....
--Kent
=================================
Kent Smith * IPSO Incorporated
Business * Technology * Solutions
Financial Services and Accounting Systems Consulting

http://www.ipsoinc.com

<Piotr.Wisniewski (AT) breat (DOT) com.pl> wrote

I would personly recommend C# (or VB.Net - they are after all just syntatic
sugar for the CLR to suck on, which means just choose the language type of
your choice [Delphi.Net is now released, if you prefer pascal syntax, and
maybe CA will even release OpenRoad.Net]).

As I listed in an unrelated thread - SOME of the reasons I like .Net ...


- Microsoft version has the best IDE I have ever come across (Visual
Studio.Net).

- Almost no difference between forms based and internet based development.

- MS version totally automates many features, including web services.


- Enables very fast development times, thus reducing development costs.

- It can run on any platform (open source version -
http://www.go-mono.com/).

- .Net/C# are open standards (ECMA and ISO -
http://msdn.microsoft.com/net/ecma/).

- Is object orientated (Software reusability is very important to me - I
hate reinventing the wheel).

- Standards are backed by a variety of major software houses and computer
companies.

- Many opensource development efforts are under way
(http://sourceforge.net).

- If a new langauge becomes the vogue, it can be ported to .Net and previous
development will not be wasted.

Before you make a decision on which product to use you might want to
check out CA Transforge - which is supposed to convert ABF code to
OpenRoad code. Cost of transforge depends on the lines of code to
convert - i'm aware of a company called EspritIT in Sydney Australia
that have used Transforge and there thoughts on the product are worth
a listen to. You can contact them via CA Australia or Andrew Pilcher
CA New Zealand.

best of luck


"Andrew Wilson" <bluemalov_NOSPAM_ (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote