Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!mks.com!tslwat!louk
From: louk@tslwat.UUCP (Lou Kates)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Opinions wanted on Empress Database Package and 4GL
Message-ID: <330@tslwat.UUCP>
Date: 8 Oct 90 06:23:31 GMT
References: <1990Sep26.192938.1101@tropix.uucp> <96@thinc.UUCP> <270DDFD3.426A@telly.on.ca>
Reply-To: louk@tslwat.UUCP (Lou Kates)
Organization: Teleride Sage, Ltd., Waterloo
Lines: 50

In article <270DDFD3.426A@telly.on.ca> evan@telly.on.ca (Evan Leibovitch) writes:
>In article <1990Sep26.192938.1101@tropix.uucp>, msr@tropix.uucp
>(Melanie S. Roche) asks for opinions on Empress:
>
>In reply, in article <96@thinc.UUCP> ethan@thinc.UUCP
>(pri=-5*Ethan A. Lish of THINC) replies:
>
>Progress is clearly the choice for any developer planning to resell
>programs or distribute programs to branch offices, as EMPRESS isn't
>available in a run-time licence. Every site running EMPRESS applications
>needs a full-development licence. However, for a site which doesn't care
>about re-distribution, Empress is more complete - some 'C' language
>interfaces, like imbedded SQL, as extra-cost in Progress but standard
>in Empress.

I don't  know about  Progress but   we found that Empress' entire
development system   cost  less than  the runtime  of many  other
vendors'  systems and  its   often handy to have the  development
system on the client's machine.

>Where the two differ the most is in the interface presented to the
>applications programmer, and the reason we dumped Empress. Its M-Builder
>is very clumsy, uses non-standard mechanisms for describing terminal
>keys and characteristics (no termcap or terminfo), and is especially

Since Empress  runs on  some non-UNIX  systems, being able to set
these items up in a way which  is independent of the way the UNIX
utilities work does have the advantage that it would allow you to
use identical  terminal setup procedures on  various versions  of
UNIX and on non-UNIX computers.

>awkward at simple pick-and-point operations. There are more things to

We are not  using the M-Builder part  of the package so perhaps I
am wrong about this  but since  you are currently using  Progress
and used to use Empress I suspect that you may be referring to an
old  version   of  M-Builder. From  information I  have seen, the
current version (version   4.3)  supports mouse and touch screens
for pick-and-point as well as text terminal emulation of this.

Also it  should be  mentioned that   some things that the Empress
database supports  (I don't know what Progress is  like in  these
respects)  include  referential  integrity, updateable 1-1 views,
distributed  updates over  multiple  nodes with two phase commit,
user defined SQL  functions, read/write  access  to   the  system
tables and  everything   comes  with  the  base   package  except
maintenance -- there are no hidden extra cost options.


Lou Kates, Teleride Sage Ltd., ...!watmath!tslwat!louk