From: jxs18@po.CWRU.Edu (Jerry Sy)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.databases
Subject: Re: Omnis 7
Date: 22 Jul 92 14:48:14 GMT
Reply-To: jxs18@po.CWRU.Edu (Jerry Sy)
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)


In a previous article, rebecca@cco.caltech.edu (Mark L. Fussell) says:

>Omnis in General  
>----------------
>
>Again, I wouldn't recommend Omnis to everyone.  Omnis's main strengths are  
>being able to: develop very sophisticated user-interfaces and reports; make  

sophisticated user-interface, NOT!, reports ? maybe.
I will call it sophisticated only when it can do what hypercard can do,
resize window in your program (I have to write an Omnis external to do
this), change scripts and attributes of buttons programmatically ( now
I have to create say, 10 different buttons and hide / show them as necessary
instead of having just one button (or other objects for that matter) and
the ability to modify the attributes (e.g. size, location, etc) dynamically
in ca program), etc.  the current state of the user interface is that you
are either stuck with it or do excruciating work arounds.

they did a good job on reports, but maybe not good enough, most of the
users of my program wants a report in spreadsheet format! and currently,
the only way to get that in omnis is to build an intermediate list first
and generate the report from the list , not an excruciating (sp?) work
around, but still a work around.

>The program, test, and debug cycle for Omnis is very tight: almost everything  
>can be tested at any time (i.e. change a window and immediately open that  
>window).
>
agreed.
>
>
>Some other faults include: incomplete database functionality (no transactions,  
>combined operations, multi-key joins, triggers, etc.), inability to  
>write/import standard text code, no data structures, and very poor  
>documentation for advanced application development.
>
as I have commented, once you start using the database seriously, you'll
discover a lot of missing BASIC database feature (as indicated above).
There are lots of things that is very difficult to do, if not impossible
to do in an omnis database, that would only be a one line code in SQL !
(comparison here maybe unfair though, I think.  but it would be nice if
omnis can do most things sql can do).

>
>If you want a much longer list of peeves, I'm sure I can create it.  Omnis  
>usually makes you painfully aware of its limitations where other programs  
>simply don't venture into an area to entice there users (i.e. 4th Dimensions  
>lack of "Omnis lists", multi-windowing, field events, etc.).  BUT if you try to  
>convert a sophisticated Omnis application to other environments you will be in  
>for a big shock. And Omnis will look much, much better.
>
entice users is a good description.  I find most features omnis demonstrates
in their demo program is IT.  that's it, what you see in the demo is what
you only get, nothing more, NO MAS!

>General Omnis problems
>----------------------
>
>>  15 character field names
>	Mildly annoying, but not despicable.  Now 8 characters WOULD be  
>despicable.
>
well, that was not really the main point.  You get 15 characters for
your file name (table name) and 15 characters for your field names,
BUT you still get 15 characters if you use the table.field method of
addressing a field!  had they made that 30 characters, it will make
more sense.  because they didn't, you make have to settel for 7 character
table names and field names then, now that is despicable.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.databases