12. 3rd Party Products


12.1 Hyperscript Tools

Hyperscript, and Wingz, were sold to an English company called "Investment Intelligence Systems Corp" (wisely abbreviated to IISC). They have a large number of ex-Informix employees on their payroll.

They intend to continue providing support and enhancements to these products

Some contact addresses are:

UK:  wingz-support@iisc.co.uk
          hstools-support@iisc.co.uk
          keitha@iis.co.uk  (Keith Andrews - Director)
        tel 071 628 6960, fax 071 638 7528

USA:
        Investment Intelligence Systems Corp.
        Wingz/HyperScript Tools Division.
        8400 W. 110th St. Suite 305
        Overland Park, KS 66212
        tel 913-663-4472


12.2 4GL Clones

Allegedly there are two such products, both created by European companies, who haven't exactly saturated the market with information!

12.2.1 Querix

On 8th Feb 1999 mehdi@querix.co.uk (Mehdi Afshar) wrote

QueriX compilers can give you all the following features and more in a GUI environment.

Check QueriX site at http://www.querix.com

Their address is

QueriX (UK) Ltd,             | Tel: +(44) 1703 232345
QueriX House                 | Fax: +(44) 1703 399685
36A London Road
Southampton, SO15 2AG        | email: mehdi@querix.co.uk
UK                           | URL:   http://www.querix.co.uk

Mike Chatwood had earlier provided this snippet of information:

Querix is being sold in the UK by Sphinx level V
Tel +44 1629 734300 Fax +44 1629 733351
http://www.levelv.co.uk

I have used this product over the last few months. I have found that it has checks syntax very carefully picking up lots of minor coding errors that r4gl lets pass. The only real problem I have found is that it does not support upscol rules.

12.2.2 Four J's Universal Compiler

On 22nd Jan 1999 gt@4js.com (Georges A. Tomazi) Vice President - Operations Four J's Development Tools wrote

Four J's Universal Compiler is fully INFORMIX-4GL compatible and enables transformation of character based programs into GUI-based, "thin" three tiered client/server systems with a simple recompile. The application can be then run on most Unix (including Linux) and Windows NT servers with a variety of user interfaces available: Microsoft Windows, X11, Java, HTML...

This product has been around since 1995 and Informix is also reselling it as Informix Dynamic 4GL since June 1998. Four J's Development Tools is a French-German-English company established in 1989.

For more information, distributors and demo version download:

Four J's Development Tools 
20, rue Troyon 
92310 Sevres - France 
Phone: +33 (0)1 55 64 07 00 
Fax: +33 (0)1 55 64 07 01 
E-Mail: info@4js.com 
Web site: http://www.4js.com


12.3 Fourgen-CASE

This from: tomw@fourgen.com (Tom Willard)

FourGen currently offers a graphical-interface Integrated Enterprise Distribution application suite collectively known as FourGen Enterprise, and professional implementation services. In addition to Order Management, Financials and Decision Support/Data Warehousing offerings, we also sell an enhanced toolset which grew out of the old CASE tools, FourGen Application Workbench. These tools are currently available to all Enterprise customers and will continue to be supported. Application Workbench is not available "a la carte".

On 2nd Mar 1999 jleffler@earthlink.net (Jonathan Leffler) wrote

Events happen quickly in the computer world. The story of Fourgen is a little more complex than the FAQ makes out, I'm afraid...

FourGen was renamed as Endura. Endura was subsequently taken over by H K Systems (http://www.hksystems.com). Endura sold the rights to the FourGen CASE tools etc to another company, Fourth Generation (kudos to John Carlson for getting this right).

The company can be reached at: http://www.fourthgeneration.com/ or http://www.fgss.com/

They have a version of the FourGen CASE tools for use with Dynamic 4GL.

You can check the Endura web site at http://www.enduracorp.com for more information about the take over (October 1998). You can discuss FourGen CASE tools with the people at Fourth Generation.

12.2.3 Etrus Software Corporation

On 20th Oct 1998 brucep@datapac.com (Bruce Partlow) wrote

Pylon Software and Data Pacific Corporation were both aquired/merged to form Etrus Software Corporation. Please see http://www.etrus.com for more detailed information. The Etrus Compiler does more than just provide a Web Interface, it is a 4gl compiler replacement that provides both a graphical front end via Java as well as a text front end. It of course supports both Online and Standard Engine and a portal version to connect to an Oracle database is in progress. In addition, later next year Etrus will be releasing it's 4gl to Java converter that is a source level conversion utility that converts your 4gl source to server side Java and connects to the Etrus Java GUI api.


12.2.4 A 4GL for Linux clone

On 29th Sep 1998 mike@aubury.demon.co.uk (Mike Aubury) wrote:-

I have just posted the information for a 4GL for Linux to my personal web page. http://www.aubury.demon.co.uk/a4gl.html

If you would be interested please contact me directly mike@aubury.demon.co.uk


12.4 ODBC Drivers

Anybody who wants to use ODBC or JDBC should read the whitepapers available at http://www.openlinksw.com

They not only describe the OpenLink products but more importantly give very good overviews of these technologies and all the issues involved. You should pay particular attention to the security options discussed which may otherwise become a problem for you.

Microsoft ODBC white paper: http://www.microsoft.com/odbc/wpapers/odbcperf.htm

There are two basically different types of ODBC drivers for use with Informix databases:

1. The server based (sometimes called multi tier) drivers who have a simple common ODBC interface for all databases on the client and a server component with interfaces to each database type.

2. The client based drivers that interfaces to the "native" client drivers from the database vendor, Informix NET or Informix Connect in the case of Informix databases.

The server based drivers generally give substantially better performance and several badly needed features, particularly in the area of security or database access control that the client based drivers don't currently supply.

Without server based drivers anyone can fire up MS Access or similar tools and update anything anywhere in the database if they have a username/password (from another Unix or PC based application) that gives them access to the database.

kennorth@interserv.com (Ken North) writes:

Your FAQ includes a reference to other sources for ODBC drivers. http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Ken_North/odbcvend.htm

is a comprehensive list of dozens of ODBC vendors and the drivers they provide. An earlier version ran in the April, 1996 issue of DBMS.


12.5 JDBC Drivers

The JDBC FAQ can be found at www.yoyoweb.com/Javanese/JDBC/FAQ.html while a list of drivers lives at splash.javasoft.com/jdbc/jdbc.drivers.html.

www.javasoft.com has all the latest developments on all parts of Java from Sunsoft.

Don't forget Mike Aubry's free non JDBC Java connectivity sofware to Informix databases at http://www.aubury.demon.co.uk

OpenLink Java/JDBC white paper: http://www.openlinksw.com/docs/jdbcwp.html

Also Ken North has a JDBC list at

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Ken_North/jdbcvend.htm


12.6 Talking to a Mac

On 11th Dec 1997 landeck@math.ohio-state.edu (Al Landeck) wrote:-

The unfortunate news is that right now there is no CLI driver for the Power Mac. The good news is that it should be available in about a month.

An anonymous person from Informix says:

"We do support connectivity on Apple Mac for ESQL/C, C++ Object Interface, and LibDMI for Informix 7.2x and 9.1x for Motorola M68K and Power PC and Illustra 3.3. These are restricted products. They require a sales rep to get pproval before their sale. This ensures that Informix can and will support the customers usage of the product before we sell it. So far we haven't fefused anyone the products.

The products are available now, and if customers want these products they must request them from their sales rep. There is no charge for these products."

Cornut Informatique have some products to help you get your Macintosh talking to your Informix databases:
CI-Link:
Middleware that connects an Informix database to PC/Windows and MACINTOSH 
applications.

Eclipse Query Lite:
A SHAREWARE graphical query tool for PC/Windows and MACINTOSH.

Eclipse Builder:
A competitive product to New Era for for PC/Windows and MACINTOSH
Trial copies can be found at www.cornut.fr


12.7 Crystal Reports Class Library

There is a New Era class library available for crystal reports. It is available at crystal Inc. web site.

http://www.crystalinc.com

or

ftp://ftp.crystalinc.com/pub/crystal/

The connection may need to be via ODBC, possibly a native driver will be provided.

12.8 Any pointers on configuring Peoplesoft?

On 15th May 1998 ttpayne@tuc.com (Tim Payne) wrote:-

We have PeopleSoft Financials 6.x (G/L and AP modules) running on Informix Dynamic Server 7.2x. Hope this helps...

1. What have you noticed as being the highly volatile tables?

2. How have you set up your user's in perspective of DBA responsibility and those that are development? In our shop DBAs are responsible for the creation of DB objects. But with People Tools the "sysadm" ID can do this responsible, is this person a DBA?

Despite this security loophole in PeopSoft, we DBAs still handle the creation of all database objects. The fact that the developers can do this is a potentential disaster, but we are keeping our fingers crossed.

3. People Soft Tables also default in extent sizing (8 for 2K pages system/16 for 4K systems) do you have an idea of the large non-applications (highly fragmented tables) that you been noticing on your database?

This is a big one! We've been in production now for 4 months, and the following tables have become *badly* fragmented, some with as many as 118 extents! In fact, I'm doing a table reorg this weekend.


12.9 What about Metacube OLAP?

On 29th Aug 1998 marioestrada@guate.net (Mario Estrada) wrote:-

Metacube Query Optimizer is a tool that as you may Know, is targeted to analyze a specific Multidimensional Model, it actually creates a Matrix for every combination from the Model and based on some methodology will determine what will be the TOP N (You tell it how many) Aggregate tables from that particular Model.

AUTOMATIC:

Letīs assume, you have a dimension containing 4 level of hierarchies, it will tell you what levels within that hierarchy are the candidates to be combined against other hierarchy levels of other dimensions, it will consider of course the Cost Disk space for a particular combination.

Actually I have been involved in two DataWarehouse Projects using Metacube 4.01, and of course I will let Warehouse Optimizer analyze the MODEL for me, and create the aggregate table, letīs say the TOP 10. Then after created them with their respective indexes (This feature is not available for automatic creation in this version), I will run update statistics High, Medium .... (Accordingly to some tips for performance and tuning).

AUDIT:

Just after I have introduced the end-users the model, they started quering information, by that time, some queries were running slow ( 5 minutes ), even when the schema was fragmented and update statistics were just fine.

In those cases I run the Metacube Warehouse Optimizer and Let it Know about the existence of my Audit File. Using that audit file, Optimizer will create the necessary aggregate tables for that particular queries, of course you should trade-off between the ocurrence of those queries with the disk space the new aggregate will consume.


12.10 Infoflex ESQL and SE clone

On 5th Mar 1998 gerard@infoflex.com (Gerard Menicucci) wrote:-

Tt occurred to me that maybe it would be useful to add information about our Informix ESQL and SE clone. We run on all UNIX platforms (including FreeBSD and LINUX) and NT.M

More information is available on our WEB site http://www.infoflex.com


12.11 Peerdirect Data Replication

On 13th Oct 1998 dbell@cntc.com (Dave Bell) wrote:-

Check out http://www.peerdirect.com Our company has developed a replication system for Informix (and several other databases) that supports secure replication through firewalls. Any questions, please contact me directly.


12.12 Peoplesoft Mailing List

On 15th Jan 1999 clem@informix.com (Clem Akins) wrote:-

Informix has an email forum, not documented on the web site, that appears to be focused specifically on PS issues. Here's what I could find:

---------------------------------------------------------------------
PeopleMix is courtesy of Informix Software, Inc.http://www.informix.com
*PEOPLEMIX MESSAGES:  Please send email to peoplemix@informix.com
*TO UNSUBSCRIBE: Send email to: list-man@informix.com
Put the following as the body of your message:  unsubscribe peoplemix
*TO SUBSCRIBE:  Send email to: list-man@informix.com
Put the following command as the body of your message: subscribe peoplemix
---------------------------------------------------------------------

12.13 SPL Debugger for Informix

On 9th Mar 1999 Advanced Global Systems Ltd announced:-

SPL Debugger is the only product on the market that offers back-end application developers interactive source code level debugger that features ability to set BREAKPOINTS, execute procedure LINE-BY-LINE, WATCH and modify values of procedure's VARIABLES and arguments, STEP INTO nested procedures and triggers, BREAK infinite LOOPS.

It also includes integrated development environment with color-coded SQL Editor, Database Object Browser and Table Editor components that streamline a back-end application development and debugging process. SPL Debugger can be invoked from any existing development tool such as Visual Basic, INFORMIX-4GL, Powerbuilder and C++. It supports Informix Dynamic Server on any platforms and is available for Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT operating systems.

To download FREE beta version of SPL Debugger: http://www.agsltd.com


12.14 OLE DB

On 2nd Sep 1999 knorth@my-deja.com (KenNorth) wrote:-

Complete list of OLE DB providers and vendors http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Ken_North/oledbven.htm