Conference ulysse::rdb_vms_competition

380.0. "4GL Applic. on Rdb" by MSAM00::ZAHIRYUSOF () Thu Jun 29 1989 11:44

    
    I'm no expert in any of the 4GL but lately I've tried to write a
    few programs on each of the following 4GL : SMARTSTAR, PowerHouse,
    Ingres, and KnowledgeBuild. The main reason I'm doing this is to
    assist our customer in selecting the 4GL that best suited for their
    environment. Right now, we have reached a dead-end and could not
    start our application development which I'm suppose  to assist
    them in Designing phase. Thus any assistance are greatly appreciated.
    
    We have eliminated SMARTSTAR since it  does not provde us with the
    facility to access fields from Rdb and RMS within the same form.
    We also eliminated Ingres since it does not have the gateway to
    Rdb in their latest version(V6.1).
    
    KnowledgeBuild on the other hand, made quite an impression to the
    customer. In fact personally I quite like its concept and the beauty
    of its user interface (screens and function keys). Unfortunately
    after reading some of the notes in the conferences, we have decided
    to back away from it.
    
    Finally, we recommended Powerhouse since it is a much mature product
    and it is able to do most of the functions that we would like to
    use in the project. However, our customer is quite reluctant to
    use it since it is not as elegant as say KnowledgeBuild. There are
    also some coding required in order to do some manipulation of screens
    and it is not easy to learn or use as Knowledgebuild.
    
    Thus we have not convinced the customer totally as not to use
    Cullinet's KnowledgeBuild for the development Tool. Some of the
    notes that I have read does not spell-out the exact problems of
    this package. Thus it is difficult for us to explained to the customer
    clearly. It would be better if someone could tell me some of the
    test that I could do that would show the obvious bugs.
    
    By the way, at one point they were also toying with the idea of
    developing the whole application systems using Cobol and Decforms.
    I'm not too enthusiastic about it since we are not given enough
    time for development. They have also seen RALLY but they are not
    really interested. I was not around during the Demo, so I don't
    really know what really happened during that time. We have not had
    any customer yet for RALLY. I am not a user of RALLY, but I'm still
    interested in knowing the strength of this product. So if anyone
    wants to give us some good points about this product you're still
    welcome -- not forgetting also the disavantages.
    
    For your info, the customer has bought 6312 Vaxcluster, Vaxstation,
    Decstation, VMS (V 5.0), Rdb/VMS (V3.0), CDD/Plus, All-In-1 (V2.3),
    and DECwindows. The application revolved around Highway Management
    and there are about 18 main application modules to be developed.
    We will also be integrating with some of the application packages
    like ROSS (Financial Accounting), MOSS (Highway Design), ARTEMIS
    (Proj. Mgt.). Thus whatever tools we used for development must be
    able to integrate with Rdb,RMS,CDD/Plus, All-in-1,Decwindows, etc.
    
    I've put the same note also in Rally_competition.

    
    Zahir.
    
    
     
    
    

    I had a customer who was also quite taken by KnowledgeBuild (or
    is it Enterprise:Builder?) but...  all screen work is done using
    SMG calls.  The customer wants to do development with DECforms, and
    Cullinet has no plans to change their product.
    
    And now that Cullinet, as a company, will no longer exist...
    

    Re .0
    
    As an aside, I thought Ingres V6.0 supported Rdb access?
    
    John.

    We did a benchmark in Belgium for a worl-wide company calles CERESTAR,
    	and the customer did the test with 3 guys :
    THey did the test :
    	3 weeks @IBM (?)
    	3 weeks @UNISYS (link)
    	3 weeks @DEC (rally)
    	
    	We proposed them to use Rally, but we had the disadavantage that
    Rally 2.0 was not yet available.
    
    So what we proposed them to to afterwards is have a look at
    Knowledgebiuld of cullinet.
    
    	There they did the benchmar again with 2 guys (instead of 3) and
    they made the whole application in 1 !!! week instead of 3 weeks.
    
    	This was their criterium to choose Cullinet, .....
    
    
    	At least we had the sale of all the vaxes in Europe, and you have
    to know that this customer was IBM installed base.
    
    REgards
    	STef

    Hi.                                                              
    
>           We proposed them to use Rally, but we had the disadavantage that
>    Rally 2.0 was not yet available.
 
    Why rally v2.0 was not available? V2.0 is available since OCT-1988
    and v2.1 is available now..
    
    I'm using rally since v1.0 and the product is really good...
    
>        There they did the benchmar again with 2 guys (instead of 3) and
>    they made the whole application in 1 !!! week instead of 3 weeks.
 
    Next time, ask for a rally specialist... maybe he spend only 1 DAY !!!
    If rally is a good, certainily for prototypes is better.
     
    tchau ha
    
    	a.m.