🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <11739@ut-emx.UUCP> xdaa374@emx.UUCP (Bill Douglass) writes:
>In article <1269@Portia.Stanford.EDU> rdsesq@Jessica.stanford.edu
>(Rob Snevely) writes:
>>Hello NetLand,
>>I heard that 4D was/is going to be able to be used to as a "frontend" for
>>Oracle DBMS running on larger machines. Has anybody heard anything about
>>this? [...]
>I would also appreciate any leads.  Also, any word on a similar fromnt-end
>arrangement for the next version of FoxBase+/Mac?  That would be a boon to our
>work, seeing as we have done most of our development in FoxBase already.  We
>have Oracle for the Mac, and would be interested in using either a '386 or
>Mac IIx with A/UX for an Oracle server.  Anyone have any leads on the
>feasability of this (in the near future?)

First of all, the 4D front end is a real product. I thought it was already
done, but they may be holding it (or they might still be debugging it). It
will work in the same way as the HyperCard EXECSQL XCMD, except that provisions
are made to deal with the lack of callback routines (naturally the HyperCard
interface will be a bit cleaner because of this...)

On the other hand, the packaging of the 4D front end is a lot less involved
than the HyperCard version.

Now, for the good part:

FoxBase has had support for XCMDs since a December developement version. It
is possible that your copy may contain this support. The last time I tested
it (I wrote a bunch of XCMDs specifically for it) it worked perfectly,
*except* for the callback functions. Not too bad for an Alpha version.

At any rate, I tested the Oracle XCMDs with FoxBase. Talking FROM Fox TO
Oracle works perfectly, right now. You can do insertions, modify the database,
etc. The problem is going the other way- getting data from Oracle back to
Fox. This doesn't work at all, as of about two months ago. Clearly this is
not terribly useful.

On the other hand,
1) Fox is releasing the XCMD support officially in version 2.0, due early
May. The Oracle XCMDs will work then, unless they are doing something illegal.
2) Oracle fully intends to support a FoxBase front end. Doing it is so
minimal, given the XCMD support, that it shouldn't take more than a month
to modify and fully test their XCMD code to work right. So we should see
Oracle for FoxBase within the year, and probably a good deal sooner.

On the third hand (:-), Oracle for the Mac doesn't seem to be doing well. If
they continue to fail in the Market, they may reconsider their plans. Who
knows what will happen?


BTW, you can run an Oracle server on either the Mac with AU/X or on a '386.
Until Apple stops selling wimpy hardware, the 386 is probably the better
bet, but the best bet of all is a cheap Sun or suchlike.

---
Alexis Rosen
alexis@ccnysci.{uucp,bitnet}