Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mit-eddie!zrm From: zrm@eddie.MIT.EDU (Zigurd R. Mednieks) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: 4th Dimension Message-ID: <7595@eddie.MIT.EDU> Date: Sun, 6-Dec-87 13:49:21 EST Article-I.D.: eddie.7595 Posted: Sun Dec 6 13:49:21 1987 Date-Received: Fri, 11-Dec-87 06:22:39 EST References: <456@PT.CS.CMU.EDU> Reply-To: zrm@eddie.MIT.EDU (Zigurd R. Mednieks) Organization: MIT, EE/CS Computer Facilities, Cambridge, MA Lines: 55 Capsule review of Fourth Dimention: Design tools: Very nice! My firm is using FD right now in a project at Bose with a business consultant from another consulting firm. She keeps changing her mind about what she wants in the database. No problem, in FD you just reconnect the lines (as long as you don't have more than a couple thousand records -- then changing your mind can get tedious). All this reconnecting can go on even while the database programming is being done. User interface: So so. It would, for instance, be nice to specify the presence or absence of scroll bars in the inteface design subsystem, but this is left to optional flags which maddeningly are not implemented in all ways that one can arrive at a given input screen. A few small details like this keep FD applications from looking like real Mac applications. Too bad. Network capability: If it works as well as it seems to, it is the best I have seen in any Mac application. You simply open your FD database from another network node and you have a multi-user transaction processing system. No effort at all. This is, to me, the most impressive feature of the system. Programming language: "ooh ick!" as Penfold would say. Yet another bastardized programming language. Too many data types, too few generic operators that work on all the data types you would expect them to work on. Sets, which are not like selections, which are not like subselections (and there is no "sub-set"), and which are all different from the current record (which might or might not be actually in the current selection, I think) all are manipulated with different sets of commands, even though they are all groups of records in database files. You can "call out" to external functions, but there is no access methods libraray that would let one access an FD database from another Mac application. Performance: Acceptable, but slow compared to Omnis3, this according to CPN, Inc. an Apple VAR that considered porting their VAR products to FD from Omnis. At Bose, we shall see if it is possible to keep track of over 1 million customers. If it is, they will move this data off their minis and on to MacIIs. A major coup for Macs in business -- if it works. I'll be impressed if it does work. Summary: It is the best there is, but it could be a lot better. My firm will be lookng at Inside Out, an RDMS implemented as a library for C and Pascal programs to use. This is what we really need to implement business applications both quickly and with a real Mac user interface. In the mean time, Fourth Dimention looks like the tool of choice. -Zigurd -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Zigurd Mednieks MURSU Corporation (617)424-0146 25 Exeter Street Boston, MA 02116