GUI-lopers!! GUI-lopers!! GUI-lopers!! GUI-lopers!! GUI-lopers!!

Posted May 15, 2003 21:48 UTC (Thu) by naughty-artkitekt (guest, #10552)
Parent article: Database dichotomy (News.com)

BUTTTTTT,

In order for the moms & pops or home uses trying to become entrepreneurs to
even accept PosgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite and others, we NEED to have a
decent, friendly, thorough & capable GUI.

GUI-lopers!! GUI-lopers!! GUI-lopers!! GUI-lopers!! GUI-lopers!!
(Think: Developers!! Developers!! Developers!! Developers!! Developers!! )

IBM is sitting on the perfect tool for that market: Lotus Approach. On the (ms)
windoze side of the world, Approach had won several awards for how it enabled/s
non-developers to create ad-hoc reports, forms, charts, cross-tabs, and such.
Sure, by today's standards, the app is behind the times, but IBM could invigorate
the product by going to OS/OSDN and saying:

We'll set up 5 competing teams, 3 of which will win after a two week or 3 week
eval. We'll sequester the winning for 15 weeks to prototype, beta, and
gold-release an updated, OS-neutral, Kylix or other compiler produced app. We'll
rip out the licensed stuff or APIs or GUI widgets we don't own (that some
bonehead sphynctroids refuse to let us port to Linux). We'll award generous pay
to the best 3 teams (of 6 or 7 devs each team) who devise the best time-saving
approach (no pun intended) to bringing a gold or beta 3 product to the market
that resists or cannot afford Notes, Domino, DB2, and the other stuff we are
trying to deploy.

To Larry Ellison: IF IBM won't get off the can, then why don't YOU (except,
PLEASE make the underlying tables a simple .dbf or similar file, not an entire
server array. I want to deploy sub-5 mb databases and sub 4-megabyte GUI
interfaces)? What happened to that Oracle Reports/database drill-down tool that
your consultants were teaching in San Jose in mid-2000? I took that class in Park
Center Plaza near the (Gomer Pyle USMC/quonset-hut like) Convention Center.
You could, Larry, revamp that tool to make it Linux-newbie and
small-company-friendly to pre-empt IBM. After all, IBM is ticking me off. They
have the huge body of developers, the Lotus contingent, and the smarts to get
around the licensing issues stuck in SmartSuite, yet they seem to care not ONE
WHIT (other than having Domino and Notes in their veins...) . I can create decent
GUI's but I don't have the bandwidth to become a dev. I'd rather sell enough apps
to afford to HIRE a dev who is a master at underlying stuff. Besides, as
embedded and h/w engineers know better the ins and outs of C++ regarding
hardware, a GUI C++ deve knows GUIs better. So, as a db programmer knows
triggers and core coding better than a GUI person, I suspect a GUI person has
better common sense about aesthetics, user-friendliness and "salable" GUIs.

Larry, if you can mimic Approach (and simultaneously do so with Lotus WordPro)
I'll gladly pay $150 to $200 for each app. Or, if there is an OSDN coder who'll do
the same, I'll gladly pay the same. If IBM chooses to get off the stick, I'll gladly
pay the same. I am sick of the delay tactic. Please deploy so we can start buying!

I now am having to learn to "roll my own" by playing with QT3, reinvestigating
Omnis Studio, and Revolution and other tools. I don't WANT to personally deal
with embedded databases. I simply want .dbf that I can bundle up in my GUI I
want to sell. I don't want or need a server running on my future Customers'
machines. They should only have to run the installer and have an os-agnostic
app. Approach or Oracle Report Writer can be a good thing in Linux. The
MySQL/PostgreSQL et al devs can do their thing, and we just have Approach or
Oracle Reports (mimicing Approach) as a front end. I am sick of one-palette,
5-tab-no-charts, no-crosstabs, no-easy-metaphor link/join interfaces that conspire
(or uninspiringly) compel serious dataminers to code data into code.

Keep the query aspects easy for non-devs, please.

David Syes, dbf digger