The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 3 (of 5) - Anyone used Gupta for commercial sw?

Anyone used Gupta for commercial sw?

Someone mentioned this on another thread. Supposed to compete with VB.

I can't tell JACK from thier website. It's all marketing fluff, as far as I can see. (Shades of Zoomba).

www.guptaworldwide.com

The real Entrepreneur
Sunday, January 18, 2004

I am the one who mentioned it. BTW, before you dismiss something you dont know anything about, how about trying it?.

I swear to God that stuff helps me develop applciations 3-4 times faster than Visual Basic. I am talking about non-web applications- client server. I dont have experience in web applications.

Let me give you an example. The language is completely object oriented with multiple inheritence. Let us say we have 2 forms, a employee maintenance form with insert,update , delete etc. and a customer maintenance form with insert.update, delete etc. It allows you to write high level classes in away that you just have to code once for both these requirements. Its way faster than VB.

Cant explain better. Just drop me a mail if you are real interested. But it seems you just want to spam.

This is not to say that they are geniuses. They screwed up their marketing big time and the .NET version is not yet developed. They plan to release it in 2005-2006.

Rigth now , microsoft is eating their lunch.

Just me
Sunday, January 18, 2004

Just me,

I haven't dismissed them at all. However, if I try it, it'll take me a few hours to get an IDEA of what the environment is like. And that doesn't tell me if there are "gotcha's" down the road.

Also, I have NEVER heard of them, despite having asked, on JoS for suggestions for our next generation software.

Does it create stand alone EXEs?
(i.e., you can do that in Delphi or C++. Makes distribution a lot easier).

The real Entrepreneur
Monday, January 19, 2004

Maybe it's the product that used to be sold as "SQL Gupta"? It's been close to ten years since I used this thing, but it looked like Access, ie. a full environment dedicated to writing c/s applications and SQL.

FredF
Monday, January 19, 2004

Yes, that seems to be the case.

There's a lot of mention of accessing data.

HOWEVER, that is NOT one of my requirements. If you're interested, here are my criteria:
http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=102547&ixReplies=27

Anyone who thinks Gupta meets that, please do post on that discussion.

The real Entrepreneur
Monday, January 19, 2004

Which was the reason I didn't recommend Visual Foxpro on that thread.

Simon Lucy
Monday, January 19, 2004

Hi real Entrepreneur

I have been contracting in the UK using this product for the last eight years.

There is some (understandable) confusion about name of company and products. When the marketing types within a company start changing names, you know it is probably in / about to be in, deep sh1t.

The company started life as Gupta, changed to Centura and is now Gupta.

The front end tool, similar to VB, started as SQLWindows, became Centura Team Developer and is now SQLWindows/32.

The first product was an excellent PC database, SQLBase. This is now ... SQLBase(!).

In SQLWindows, you can declare Windows API functions / messages and use them quite happily.

The way code is presented is great - it can all be in one file and be expanded / collapsed.

Applications are not standalone executables - there are lots of grotty runtime libraries - what modern environment would ever go down that route?? ;)

The largest commercial appliocation written using SQLWindows I have worked on is Logica's 'Nexus'. This is a Gas / Electricity customer billing system using Oracle as the backend and used by many major utilities. The front end code was written in less than 6 months by a small team (it shows).

I have been looking around for a new development environment to use for several years - and found it in C# / .NET. It has the same elegant design and WOW factor I found all those years ago.

A useful link is www.iceteagroup.com - these guys know what they are about. And they are busy writing SQLWindows to .NET converters.

DodgyAccountant
Monday, January 19, 2004

http://www.integra.co.uk do a database for membership organisations which used a sqlbase backend - and I think they originally used the gupta tools. They're now moving to SQLServer and .NET.

Of course if dodgyaccountant works in Wimbledon, he may be able to shed additional light ;-)

A cynic writes
Monday, January 19, 2004

Hi Cynic

I don't work in Wimbledon but I knew someone who worked at Integra - he said they were a good outfit.

Integra's product was indeed written in SQLWindows.

DodgyAccountant
Monday, January 19, 2004

Curios what Guptra was, I did a Google search, and theres actually a Google Group for Centura Team Developer.

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&group=forum.centura.team.developer

That that helps.

Nick
Monday, January 19, 2004

The centura Gupta groups is inactive !! Dont use Google

Use this newsgroup instead and post using Netscape messenger or outlook express

http://www.guptaworldwide.com/DevCenter/Default.aspx#newsgroups

Subscribe to "MArketing feedback" and post your query

Kar
Monday, January 19, 2004

I worked in GUPTA for about 3 years in the early nineties.

I thought it was a great product with superior OO functionality. It's main competition was Powerbuilder not VB.

However the market penetration of the product seemed to decline from about 95 onwards, and as I couldn't make money out of it I lost interest in it.

Great product though.

Ch 10
Monday, January 19, 2004

Wow, it is beyond my wildest imagination that someone actually still works with this product from the early 90's. My head is STILL spinning.

Bella
Sunday, January 25, 2004