Designer & Developer 2000

Background: The Ministry of the Environment for British Columbia is working with both Designer/2000 and Developer/2000. The Ministry of the Environment branch of the provincial government is responsible for the development and enforcement of environment legislation for the province. Its vision is to ensure "an environment that is healthy and enriches peoples' lives."

Platforms: The products run on Windows desktops against HP servers. The Developer product is also being run on Mac desktops in its beta release.

Product Functionality: The company has four very diverse systems on-line. These products solve all of the client/server development tasks and specific business problems. They set the standard for all of the company's client/server development.

Strengths: Each products' integration ability with the database is its greatest strength. Both Designer/2000 and Developer/2000 are good, solid development environments with complete and total integration with the database. Also, since the Ministry of the Environment was already an Oracle shop, working with these two products was a natural progression.

Weaknesses: Overall, both products are very strong and work well. There are little if any serious weaknesses. Initially, there were some small bugs, but they have since been corrected. It is a large tool set which can seem overwhelming at times, however, its size is also a major benefit of the products.

Product Characteristics: Since the company was an Oracle shop prior to installation of Designer/2000 and Developer/2000, the products were extremely easy to install and use. For developers experienced in using Oracle products, these two products added to our productivity immediately and we were able to complete tasks within the first day. For developers with little or no experience with the Oracle tool set, the learning curve was longer, however it was still not significant. Approximately three to four weeks of working with the product allowed a proficient developer to become comfortable with the coding and the products themselves. Designer/2000 also provided good working examples of how to get started and how to begin coding.

Product Deliverables: Designer/2000 generated forms and is responsible for all of the Ministry's systems documentation. It acts as the main documentation vehicle for maintenance. Developer/2000 acts as a GUI development environment for the Ministry of the Environment. It helps produce screens that users like and find easy to work with.

Selection Criteria: In addition to the easy integration within the company because of prior experience with Oracle products, the main reason these two products were selected was that they took away all problems with the database and allowed the company to focus on GUI development. Other similar products required the writing of a lot of code in order to deal with the database, while they de-emphasized work with the GUI, side. The Ministry was looking for a product to do exactly the opposite. Moving from a character based environment to a GUI environment is very difficult and the Ministry wanted a product that would allow it to concentrate on the GUI side and not have to worry about the database. These two products dealt with the database right out of the box, so the company was free to work extensively on the GUI side.

Vendor Support: The Ministry has worked with beta programs of both products in the past and has always received tremendous vendor support from Oracle. The Ministry has given extensive feedback to Oracle regarding their products and has seen several of the suggestions implemented and concerns solved. Features were installed almost as if the Ministry had specified them.