Servoy and FrontBase

Classic Servoy
1

Has anyone had any experience using Servoy and FrontBase together? As I continue my search for the perfect RAD environment, I am pretty much settled on Servoy and am looking at the backend. Gotta get this right the first time! :)

They seem to be 2 companies with very similar attitudes.

2

Hi John,

Just a thought here… I did some searches on Frontbase in this forum, and there are three postings, two of which belong to you. I did equivalent searches for Sybase, Oracle, MySql and Sql Server, and there are hundreds of posts. Personally, I prefer to base my work on a product that I know others have used successfully over time. Any time I can learn from the hard work of others, I take advantage of their wisdom.

It also occurs to me that there may be solid reasons for a Frontbase choice in your case. Perhaps a major client is standardized on Frontbase. Perhaps there are feature sets in Frontbase that make it uniquely suited to your projects. If there are solid reasons for making this choice, I’d surely like to learn from your research.

If, however, you’re looking for a solid, reliable database product, I’d suggest sticking with tried and true solutions, rather than the unusual solution.

Best,

Rich Coulombre

3

We have a few customers running frontbase, so I know the combo works.

I also think Rich is making a good point that you might want to stick with the more used combinations, particularly if you are getting started with Servoy. The good news of developing with Servoy is that you can switch over to any other database when you want to (or have to), if you don’t build in database specific dependencies (such as calling database specific stored procedures, and/or using datatypes that are specific to your back-end database). In general I advice to start with the database we ship with Servoy (Sybase iAnywhere one of the most used embedded database worldwide) and, if at production time a switch is necessary, take the decision then if you should try other databases.

4

Rich & Jan,

Thank you for your input. Some of the reasons for looking at FrontBase:

  1. I started this search for RAD with Omnis and on their listserv, FB is highly recommended.
  2. It is specifically made to run on Mac OSX Server, not ported over. This will be served from Mac OSX servers.
  3. It is modern. So many have a lot of legacy baggage. Quote from their site “FrontBase was created to fill the need for a robust and scalable relational database server that was Internet enabled, had no downtime, and required zero administration” Gee, sounds like Servoy! Of course, that is marketing talking, but it does sound good.
  4. I am new to SQL (coming from FM7) and really want to do this once, not twice
  5. No licence fee until I am ready to deploy. I am financing this whole project out of my pocket, which is quite small.
  6. I talked to a developer using FB with Omnis. He said FB was faster than Oracle and alot cheaper with terabyte capability.

These are some of the things I am considering in my decision making. I have to admit I was rather surprised that the only real caveat to using FB was that hardly anybody here on the forum used it. It is well regarded in the Omnis world and is used by Apple and Best Western. I would not be looking at Servoy either if that was my criteria. Performance, value and capability are of more concern to me than just name or image.

Jan, do you know how your customers are getting along with FrontBase? I am very open to hearing about problems with the database or company. Are there interface or performance problems? Is the company going under?

Thanks for the time both of you have given in helping me make my decisions.

5

I know that FrontBase focusses strongly on Mac OS X (it even comes/came bundled with WebObjects) but if money is an issue and you want an enterprise level (O)RDBMS then I can recommend PostgreSQL.

It runs on many, many platforms. Is terrabyte capable. Is very robust and tested over time. It is Open-Source and free (as in beer) for any use and version 8 has implemented enterprise level features like tablespaces, savepoints, point-in-time recovery, etc.
It comes with a slew of languages that can be used for stored procedures (pl/PgSQL, pl/Perl, pl/Java, pl/PHP, etc)
It also has a bunch of add-ons like PostGIS (geographical data), TSearch (full text search), etc.
I has a very active development community for the main engine but also for add-ons and apps that work with PostgreSQL.
And more and more developers also develop their apps for Mac OS X.
More info can be found on the PostgreSQL website.

I run PostgreSQL on an Xserve without any problems. I also run it on my Powerbook for development.

You can compile PostgreSQL yourself from source, but I think you prefer (like me) a simple installer for OSX.
You can find one on Marc Liyanage’s website. He also has a ready to use startup item so PostgreSQL launches as a daemon at startup.

As admin tools I can recommend pgAdmin III and/or phpPgAdmin.

Hope this helps.

6

Robert,

Thanks for the pointer to PostgreSQL. This whole SQL thing is a new area for me. I don’t understand, yet, most of what I read. :cry:

Two questions:

  1. The price is right, but how easy is it for a non-UNIX fellow to use? I am a FMPro7 user not a unix geek. :shock:
  2. How fast is it? I need not only stablity, but quick response for a large number of users.

Free is good, but is often perceived as not the way to go for “serious” stuff. Any comments on that?

7

firestorm:
Thanks for the pointer to PostgreSQL. This whole SQL thing is a new area for me. I don’t understand, yet, most of what I read. :cry:

Two questions:

  1. The price is right, but how easy is it for a non-UNIX fellow to use? I am a FMPro7 user not a unix geek. :shock:
  2. How fast is it? I need not only stablity, but quick response for a large number of users.

Free is good, but is often perceived as not the way to go for “serious” stuff. Any comments on that?

As I recommended earlier: why don’t you start using the built-in Sybase iAnywhere license (FREE) and as you start learning more about sql databases change your selection (if necessary). iAnywhere is used by many, many more companies than FrontBase and is stable, scalable and comes with GUI management tools at no additional cost.

8

I think firestorm is afraid if he chooses for a database, he must stick to it!
If you get to learn more of Servoy, you learn that it is very-easy to migrate your solution to another database.

It is just exporting & importing your solution. that’s it! Servoy takes care of the columns types etc..etc..

We also have ouer development on Sybase, but we have some production, under MySQL and (an older solution) running under Firebird.

9

Hi John,

firestorm:

  1. The price is right, but how easy is it for a non-UNIX fellow to use? I am a FMPro7 user not a unix geek. :shock:

After you follow the very clear installation instructions on that website you don’t have to bother with the command-line anymore when you don’t want to. After installation you can control the whole database with the GUI tools I mentioned.

firestorm:
2. How fast is it? I need not only stablity, but quick response for a large number of users.

It is fast, especially compared to FileMaker.

firestorm:
Free is good, but is often perceived as not the way to go for “serious” stuff. Any comments on that?

Afilias, which manages the .ORG registration, uses PostgreSQL to store all of .ORG registry information. The American Chemical Society uses PostgreSQL to store documents that exist only within that database. BASF uses PostgreSQL in a shopping platform for its agriculture products. The World, a media company, has built much of its infrastructure around the use of PostgreSQL. Etc.

Is that serious enough ;)

You can also read some case studies.

I hope this clears things up a bit.