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From: glen@proexam.UUCP (Glen Brydon)
Newsgroups: comp.databases,comp.software-eng
Subject: 4GL and  Application Prototyping in Databases
Summary: extreme frustration at attempts to develop maintainable code in 4GL
Keywords: 4GL DBMS prototype maintainability OSL QBF
Message-ID: <378@proexam.UUCP>
Date: 12 Jul 89 22:19:05 GMT
Reply-To: glen@proexam.UUCP (Glen Brydon)
Organization: Professional Examination Service, NYC
Lines: 60

I have been trying to build applications in Ingres 4GL for several years now.
Recently we have been trying to find someone who can help in this process, but
have found relatively few individuals who have any significant experience in
using this system (perhaps Ingres, but not the 4GL). I have long since become
frustrated with the system for the following reason - there is no forms based
method of building the framework for an application without requiring me to
generate tons of OSL (4GL) code which ends up being traditional 3GL code.

RTI does provide a tool that is forms based and intellegent called:
Query by Forms (QBF), but while providing a fairly nice minimal application
it does not allow me to extend that tool to do the things I might want.
QBF is designed to browse and modify tables and simple joins, but I want to
hook into the mechanism with my own constraints or code fragments. No such
facility exists. Alternatively I would settle for a library of well structured
tools which I can use to get the same functionality as QBF, but which I can
insert into my own application - no dice. Without this nonexistent library
my applications tend quickly toward being too big (for 4GL) and very difficult
to maintain as I need to change even simple features of the form.

One candidate recently told me that he would be quite happy to help me develop
applications for my firm if I would only dump INGRES in favor of Oracle. While
we have currently invested a fair amount of time, effort and $$$ into our
current direction, I do not feel wedded to INGRES. I am now registered to
attend a sales presentation seminar for Oracle directed toward Government
installations using UNIX. This man who wants me to dump INGRES has spent
some amount of time evaluating and developing in Ingres, Oracle as well and
Informix. He says that Informix is simply a joke, and that while Ingres is
a pretty good database, it falls far short of Oracle in this area of allowing
the developer to quickly build applications in such a way that the complexity
is controlled and maintenance does not become a nightmare. His final comment
was that Sybase, while being often selected for its top-notch transaction
performance is not quite as good as Oracle. Sybase and Oracle consider
each other to be competetors and neither consider Ingres to be one.

As I browse through the advertisments for application development products
and databases with such support it looks as though everyone has it on the
competition. A recent UNIX review magazine issue listed the following
products:
	Informix - 3 times faster than any other 4GL?
	Oracle - largest database company (so what?) speed WITH power
	Ingres - CASE tools (not just yet!)
	Empress - compares itself to Oracle, Informix, Ingres and Sybase
	Interbase - BLOBS and capturing "business rules"?
	PROGRESS - compared to Oracle and informix by DATAPRO satisfaction rating
	Unify ACCELL - application generator works with any RDBMS!
	JYACC JAM - same as ACCELL?

So we have the integrated database systems with application development
systems and the application generators which work on any database. Without
the opportunity to use more than one system and approach it would seem very
difficult to know for sure who has the best approach.

Now for the point to all of this - would people with comments, advice
and warning please share it with the rest of us? Anyone who feels that they
understand the basic approach to so called application development tools
could possibly describe to us what makes their approach unique, etc.
Does your system do more than simply give you a forms/menu environment and
database access? Thanks for your knowledge/advice/comments.

Glen Brydon