www.netiva.com

By Tom Stearns
IntraNet, 12/15/97

Developing database applications is a difficult task, made more so when it comes time to move such applications to the World Wide Web.

Netiva Software, in Campbell, Calif., aims squarely at this market with Netiva, its visual database development tool.

The database application market is a moving target, however, and Netiva misses the mark in comparison with Java-based visual development tools such as Borland International, Inc.'s JBuilder, Sybase, Inc.'s PowerJ Enterprise and SuperCede, Inc.'s SuperCede. Unlike these companies, Netiva uses proprietary, non-Java code.

Netiva's strongest point is its implementation of database features, with two- and three-tier client/server support, commit/rollback and two-phase commit built in. Netiva handles database connectivity through Microsoft Corp.'s Open Data-base Connectivity (ODBC) and a number of legacy database drivers for dBASE, Para-dox and even comma-delimited text.

Data within Netiva is manipulated using the company's proprietary but straightforward macro language. This language is patterned on BASIC with a number of built-in data-centric features. These make Netiva's macro language simple and powerful.

Extra step

The pages you create visually must run on a proprietary Netiva server that coexists with your Web server.

Clients are Web browsers that need to load a Netiva component before being able to run Netiva applications. This can lead to a head-ache about which developers of Java-based databases need not worry.

Netiva Software licenses the server on a concurrent connection basis; the server monitors licensed connections.

At $4,999 for a two-connection license, Netiva is expensive. This is without factoring in the training you'll need to get your development team up to speed on this proprietary implementation.

The costs compare poorly with competing products. For example, Sybase's PowerJ, a visual Java application development tool with a full complement of database support, costs $3,000 less. And developers familiar with Microsoft's Visual Basic or Borland's Delphi will find it easy to pick up.

Applications created in Java environments are royalty-free and run on any Java-compliant browser or Java Virtual Machine.

Under the glass

While it is a visual tool, Netiva does not emulate the standard look of Visual Basic (see graphic). This divergence makes it different enough to require some concentration for mastery of the tool.

I found Netiva quite easy to use for connecting to some dBASE files, but the dBASE driver lacked support for multiuser access. This limits its use to nonlive data tables. In other words, other applications cannot access the data at the same time as Netiva.

Netiva's support of other database servers through ODBC is excellent. Two specific areas of native Netiva capabilities impressed me.
First is its support for two-tier, traditional client/server architectures, as well as the more modern three-tier model. In the latter, a transaction server sits between the client and database server.

The other impressive feature is Netiva's support for commit/rollback, which is the capability to submit a set of actions to a database and be sure that the entire transaction is either completed or deleted. This is required for serious database work and it's nice to see that Netiva addresses this need.

Performance on my Windows NT client, a 266-MHz Pentium II with 64M bytes of RAM, was good, as it should have been.

Netiva installation is straightforward and quick. When you first run the program, you can view a tutorial that provides a good introduction to Netiva programming.

However, the Netiva tutorial is clumsy in its execution - it runs in a Web browser. Finding a way to see both the tutorial and Netiva is difficult, even on my 1,280 pixel-by-1,024 pixel desktop.

The tutorial is repeated in a booklet titled Zen of Netiva. The other manual, a nearly 500-page user guide, is a comprehensive discussion of Netiva. The manual is indexed nicely and has several useful appendixes.

In the end

In a vacuum, Netiva is a good product. In the current Java-laden atmosphere, however, Netiva gets tarnished.

Comparing Netiva to the current crop of visual Java tools leaves Netiva wide of the mark. It is expensive and proprietary, making it less appealing than other visual tools for creating Web database applications.

Stearns is a system consultant and author in Salt Lake City. He can be reached at tom@stearns.com.