October 7, 1996
Issue: 632
Section: Network Applications -- Client/Server and PBX-to-Computer Applications,
Database
By Martin Marshall
Oracle officials this week introduced a beta version of their Developer/2000 application with support for object partitioning, which is key to enterprise-level scalability.
Developer/2000 is Oracle's flagship development environment for connecting Oracle and other databases to corporate applications.
According to Steve Ehrlich, Oracle's director of product marketing for the tools division, the new version includes a variety of software wizards that take the developer in steps through the data linking process, as well as synchronization with the underlying database, a new object library and object partitioning capabilities.
Mike Brando, a product engineer at the PE Nelson division of Perkin Elmer Corp., San Jose, Calif., said the separation of Developer/2000 objects into a separate object library is the feature that is most attractive to him in the beta version. "With Forms 4.5, we needed to know the original source file for an object, but with the new version, you don't need to know where the source is located," he said.
Brando's team at Perkin Elmer is using Developer/2000 to create and modify a lab information management system aimed at large pharmaceutical companies. He doesn't think that the new wizards will be of much use to his group, because it is already composed of "hard core" Oracle-savvy programmers. Object partitioning, a new feature in version 2.0, already was implemented by his group, Brando said.
Oracle will include an unspecified number of components to start the library that it ships with the product, including a set of ActiveX controls, an object browser, a calendar, a calculator, tabs and tab sheets, tool bars and charting forms. This is the first version to support ActiveX controls, and an ActiveX control can be embedded in an application, as well as reports and charts developed in Developer/2000.
"I would like to see Oracle add the ability to cut the object library down into multiple libraries," said Brando. "One thousand items in a single library is not as easy to search as five libraries containing two hundred items each." In the first version of Developer/2000, objects each resided in the app itself, rather than in a separate library.
With this version, Oracle is opening up access to the internal hooks of Developer/2000 to let third-party tools vendors add complementary software. In the first step of what Oracle is calling the Open Tools Initiative, the company is publishing an API to Developer/2000 that'll let PVCS and Tuxedo apps, among others, be tightly linked into the Developer/2000 environment.
Oracle can be reached at www.oracle.com or at 800-842-4425.
Copyright * 1996 CMP Media Inc