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From: lrp.admin@mhs.unc.edu (Ray Porter)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development,comp.lang.basic.visual,comp.lang.basic.visual.misc,comp.databases.sybase
Subject: Re: Visual Basic vs. PowerBuilder
Date: Wed, 30 Nov 1994 08:17:26
Organization: UNC-CH
Lines: 95
Message-ID: <lrp.admin.216.00084AA7@mhs.unc.edu>
References: <davebo.18.0010EDAE@mcs.com> <ronnyong.230.00DD9DA9@unicomp.net>
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In article <ronnyong.230.00DD9DA9@unicomp.net> ronnyong@unicomp.net (Ronny Ong) writes:
>From: ronnyong@unicomp.net (Ronny Ong)
>Subject: Re: Visual Basic vs. PowerBuilder
>Date: Tue, 29 Nov 1994 10:23:01 LOCAL
>In article <davebo.18.0010EDAE@mcs.com> davebo@mcs.com (Dave Borowiec) writes:
>>Has anyone done a comparison of these 2 tools? We are running Sybase System
>These threads are really a dime a dozen and if you step back and take a real,
>hard, long look at the issues, what you'll find is that PowerBuilder kicks
>butt if you are in a traditional, corporate MIS (i.e. COBOL background)
>environment. Visual Basic rules if you are more of a pedal-to-the-metal coding
>shop.
I have to disagree with this point. We are an old-style, mainframe/COBOL shop
with around 135 application developers (though we're an academic institution
and not a corporation) serving several thousand users spread across campus and
distributed among about 8 application development groups. We have developed a
number of applications in VB ranging from check writing systems to a gui
interface for our purchasing system that uses screen scraping to interact with
legacy systems to a VB front-end for a 4,000,000+ row Sybase database using
DB_SQLPASSTHROUGH and ODBC to execute stored procedures. Performance has been
excellent (so far), and usually a match for our old CICS/VSAM/IDMS systems.
We actually found the fact that VB requires a little more coding to do
somethings than PB to be an advantage (increased programmer control and
flexibility). We have generally learned to stay away from the data control
and rely almost exclusively on data objects. Where we have met some
resistance is among some of the older programmers who have done nothing but
COBOL for 30 years and have no desire to learn the new technologies. However,
they would be just as resistant to PB as they are to VB.
>Ultimately, you _can_ do anything with either tool. (A few things require
>nitty gritty code in one that don't in the other, but there are
>always other things where the situation is reversed. It all depends
>on exactly what you want to do.) Ultimately, they cost about the same _if_ you
>really want/need to equip VB with all the extras that PowerSoft throws in
>their box. (Maybe you do, maybe you don't.) People will try to tell you that
>PB requires less coding. That's only true if you _don't_ buy all the add-ons
>that raise VB's price to match PB's. PB is buggy, but so is VB. PowerSoft has
>merged with Sybase, casting shadows of doubt on them as a supplier. Many
>people despise Microsoft, too, though. PB and VB both have incomplete object
>models. PowerScript is very similar to Visual Basic in the language department.
We haven't experienced any need to buy a large number of add-ons for VB. The
only additional controls we have purchased are TrueGrid Pro and Crystal
Reports Pro. Data objects and what comes in the box with VB Pro seem to
provide everything we need (at least so far). At least in our case, the cost
of VB has remained considerably below that of PB (especially when you consider
the number of additional db interfaces we'd have to buy from PB). Of course,
your mileage may vary.
>We handle complex application development projects that most of the small
>"consultant" and contract shops won't touch for under $100 an hour. We find
>that PB, VB, ObjectView, SQLWindows ... they all make easy stuff easy, but the
>hard stuff is still hard. Things like unbalanced control breaks and multiple
>types of detail bands in reporting are largely unaddressed by anything but
>code. The tools all have some sort of auto-lookup capability in forms design,
>but they never have automatic explosion of component detail. We chose not to
>go with PB because if you're doing hard stuff, you'll be writing code for it
>anyway, so might as well buy the cheaper tool. We haven't eval'ed PB4 yet, but
>if we ever find a tool that does the hard stuff without code, we'll jump in a
>heartbeat.
These are all valid points. I would particularly like to see a reporting tool
that handles multiple detail bands and unbalanced control breaks. We haven't
looked at PB in a while and we may at some point in the future evaluate it
again. When we did consider it, the price per developer was truely
prohibitive. We could purchase sufficient licenses for VB Pro for our entire
shop for the initial price of PB and a license for one or two developers (out
of 135). The price differential became even more siginificant when the
educational discount was factored in and the fact that we could buy a limited
number of copies of VB and site lock them while PB required a separate license
for each and every developer.
We may have to reevaluate PB at a later date and we may look at some of the
other products (the hints about Delphi certainly sound interesting), but up to
now, VB has admirably met all of our needs. Of course, someone else mentioned
that these discussions tend to take on elements of religious debates, kind of
like the ongoing debate between Mac users and IBM/clone users about which is
the better machine. I think it largely depends on which you're really
familiar with. They'll both do the job; which tool you prefer is mostly a
matter of which you've had the most experience with.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Ray Porter
Applications Analyst Programmer
Administrative Data Processing
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Phone: 919/966-5878 Fax: 919/962-0900
eMail: lrp.admin@mhs.unc.edu
unclrp@uncmvs.oit.unc.edu