Future of 4GLs

[Darren Reely]

The other day I was searching the internet for Cognos Powerhouse to see 
what was available short of the cognos.com site. There isn't much useful 
information. But...

Of interest to past discussions we've had regarding moving away from 
Powerhouse, I found an article from late 1998. It talks about why 
companies were moving away from 4GL technology. I found it an 
interesting read.

Things mentioned were; a drive to multi-tier systems, component 
standards & reuse & vendor available modules, shortage of programmers, 
productivity vs flexibility, improved 3GL IDEs, proprietary & inflexible 
4GL nature, and lastly, that programmers don't want to be locked into a 
proprietary tool such as Powerhouse.

The article is at http://www.adtmag.com/print.asp?id=3917

My two favorite parts of the article are;

[From a company perspective, training can be expensive when it comes to 
getting developers up to speed on 4GL tools. Go into any local bookstore 
(or surf to your favorite online bookseller) and you can find hundreds 
of titles dealing with the ins and outs of Java. Try that with Forté or 
Cognos' PowerHouse 4GL environment.]

and

["The fact that Java is a 3GL will not impact people's decisions," 
Zimmerman said. "4GL is not an important concept."]


Darren