Timothy
Parker Consulting Incorporated
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Omnis Studio 2.4 Rapid Application Development (RAD) tools were a hugely
popular niche about a dozen years ago, especially with the dawning of the
Windows, X, and Motif workstations. RAD
tools allowed you to design an application visually, often using drag-and-drop
blocks of code and tons of forms, and the RAD tool would generate code for your
application. Seldom was the
application perfect, but the code produced saved many hours of tedious coding.
RAD tools have not been very popular of late although some, like
Borland’s JBuilder, are experiencing a renaissance. Into this environment comes a new release of Omnis Studio
from Omnis Software. Omnis Studio
is a RAD tool for GUI database-centric applications. The tool contains many facets, but the primary part is the
RAD system and a fourth generation scripting language. Omnis Studio is a
portable package, allowing you to develop an application under one environment
such as Windows and deploy it on a completely different system such as Linux. Since Omnis Studio is database-centric, we started by
looking at its database capabilities. Not
only can Omnis Studio handle internal databases, but it can also integrate with
external database packages that use SQL including the big four (Informix,
Oracle, Sybase and DB2). A notable part of the package is its ability to produce
Web content that hinges on one or more databases, updating dynamically. The Web
interface requires a plug-in for Web browsers (so far, Netscape Navigator and
Windows Explorer are supported). Omnis
Studio has a ton of Wizards and other tools to help you develop applications,
even complex ones, quickly. The Omnis Studio package we received is impressive.
The software is supplied on CD-ROM and includes both Linux and Windows
versions. System requirements are reasonable. Linux support is for RedHat, SuSe
and Caldera although we also ran a simple development task under Mandrake
without a hitch. The three perfect bound manuals are sizable, and our review
copy came with two training manuals and a CD-ROM training course.
There is a lot of depth to Omnis Studio, far more than we managed to
plumb in our week-long exposure to the tool, but the abilities are hinted at in
the documentation. For our tests, we installed Omnis Studio on both a Windows 98
Second Edition and a RedHat 6.2 platform, both equipped with 500MHz PIIIs and
128MB RAM. Omnis Studio looks and works almost exactly the same under Windows as
it does Linux. Building an Omnis Studio application starts with defining
the database schema, then using the schema link parts of the application. The
design of the interface is elegant. A
good example if the Library Browser, where you select the classes your
application requires. All you need
do is drag the class over the Computer Store (which holds the classes) and the
class is automatically instantiated for you.
The front-end interface to the schema is designed with a GUI design tool
that lets you create simple, attractive forms and reports in minutes.
Pop-up and pull-down menus, text widgets, and other form elements are
easily dragged and dropped. After prototyping, a test mode lets you play with
the interface and underlying code to test the system, and then you can generate
finished applications. If a client is to run the application, a runtime
environment must be installed, but that’s a simple task. The learning curve for medium-complexity applications was a
lot gentler than we anticipated. The documentation gives you tons of examples
that are based in reality, not some never-encountered fictional setup or a
too-trivial application. If you need to create simple to moderate applications,
you may never need to crack the books open: the Omnis Studio interface
practically guides you through the process.
As your applications become complex, you will need to spend time
mastering the system but the time is well spent. Omnis Studio is impressive and will meet the needs of
practically all database-centric application developers. The price of the
package will quickly repay itself in saved time. Omnis Studio 2.4 Summary: Probably the cleanest and easiest to use database application generator we’ve seen. Simple, reasonably fast, and nicely Web-centric. |
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tparker@tpci.com with
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