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Conference ulysse::rdb_vms_competition

Title:DEC Rdb against the World
Moderator:HERON::GODFRIND
Created:Fri Jun 12 1987
Last Modified:Thu Feb 23 1995
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:1348
Total number of notes:5438

1084.0. "RDB dev tools vs. Oracle targeting MAC front end" by LAVGOD::SIMONIAN () Fri Feb 07 1992 22:27

Help!  I'm competing against Oracle for an RDB sale.  The customer
has MacIntosh PC's as the front end device.

Oracle has present OracleCard as having a nice GUI for application
development, allowing the MAC as the target.

What are my options from DEC and ISV's for applications development
software with state of the art Graphical User Interfaces?

Guy

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1084.1DATABS::NEEDLEMANtoday nas/is, tomorrow...Sat Feb 08 1992 18:514
    check the tools from techgnosis. I seem to remember they had a slick
    mac front end. Also look to the decquery people.
    
    B
1084.2Hypercard & DALARRODS::FINNIMon Feb 10 1992 10:563
You could also look at Apple's DAL product which allows a number of Macintosh
front-ends, including Hypercard (of which Oracle card is a sort of clone) to
access various databases including Rdb/VMS.
1084.3RDB development environment viewed as difficultWILARD::SIMONIANGuy Tue Feb 11 1992 03:3513
Decquery is a read only solution.  Aside from technosis, I've heard 
reference to many other MAC solutions, Progress, Dimension, etc.

DAL offers a good programming interface, yet lacks the slick appeal
of CARDtools, even though DAL will have more functionality.

This is exactly why Digital is loosing market share of Relational Databases 
to Oracle.  While Oracle pitches the ease of software development for 
multiple client platforms, we at Digital respond by scrambling to piece 
together solution that is exactly that, pieced together.

In the time it takes us to put something together to make a stand against 
Oracle at one account, they have taken their message to 3 others.
1084.4Hypercard is a plusARRODS::FINNITue Feb 11 1992 11:306
I agree with what -1 says about ORACLE.

I should have emphasised that I was suggesting that
you should push Apple's Hypercard, which is easy to use and very well known in
the Macintosh world as a way of beating ORACLEcard. The fact that it uses DAL is
a technical issue, and not necessarily a selling point.
1084.5Super PlusLAVGOD::SIMONIANTue Feb 11 1992 20:1633
    The client has Hypercard and is not satisfied with it.  Also, Oracle
    has them chomping on the bit of a single development environment across
    multiple client platforms.  Hypercard only runs on MAC, right?
    
    
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Note 1164.1          RDB dev tool vs. Oracle for MAC target               1 of 2
MR4DEC::VANTREECK "SCUDlite -- never hits the spot!"  22 lines   7-FEB-1992 15:11
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    I think OracleCard was co-developed with Spinnaker Software. They also
    have a PC-DOS and Windows version. Get a copy of Spinnaker's Plus to
    edit OracleCard. Oracle might have ported it to HyperCard. If so, use
    the "set userlevel 5" command in HyperCard (HyperCard available on most
    all Macs now -- bundled with the OS) to go into the software
    developer's mode to edit OracleCard. It should be pretty simple to
    rewrite the scripts to send the variant of SQL required for Rdb. You
    might even be able to get Spinnaker to do this for you. Give them a few
    thousand dollars. If the sale is important, you office has the money...
    
    Or you can purchase Omnis 7plus from Blythe Software. It has a
    HyperCard-like interface and supports DAL access to Rdb (and Oracle).
    You can probably hack the same capability as OracleCard in a couple
    of evenings (if you're still a hacker).
    
    I'd write a clone of OracleCard for Rdb in my spare time -- for small
    fee of course. But the new issue of Neural Networks has an article
    describing a network design that is dangerously close to catching up to
    something I've been planning to patent. So, I've got other things to
    work on furiously while I'm at home. Sorry!
    
    -George
1084.6What about InstantSQL?NOVA::WASSERMANDeb Wasserman, DTN 264-1863Tue Feb 11 1992 22:401
    Has anyone looked at InstantSQL as a possible competitor to OracleCard?