Comparisons of GUI toolkits, RDBMS, and Development

EnvironmentsEnvironments

Prepared By:

Syed Feroz Zainvi

More notes available at: http://www.computer-science-notes.blogspot.com

Highlights

Qt Vs MFCQ

MySQL Vs Oracle

VC 6.0 Vs Visual C++ 2008

Qt Vs MFC

Feature Qt MFC

O i G hi l C t lkit G hi l t lkit f Overview Graphical C++ toolkit Graphical toolkit for Windows OS

Vendor Initially, Trolltech. Now, Nokia

MicrosoftNokia

Year of Introduction 1994 Mid 90’s

Object Orientation Clearly Object Oriented Object oriented wrapper over Win32 APIover Win32 API(Awful C/C++ Mix)

PlatformsSupported

Windows, Unix flavors, Mac,Embedded Devices

WindowsSupported Embedded Devices

Design Model Does not force any design model

Forces use of Document/View model and templates. Leads to pDifficulties.

Consistency Consistent: naming, hierarchy, class organization

Lesser consistency, More tricks

Qt Vs MFC

Feature Qt MFC

C i ti Si l Sl t llb k E t d i f kCommunicationMechanism

Signal-Slot callback mechanism. Simple & Powerful.

Event-driven framework.Not easy leading to problems sometimes.

Layout Mechanism Supported Not supported leading to Layout Mechanism Supported Not supported leading to problems when resized or translated

Designer Tools Qt Designer. More powerful. Resource Editor. Limited Designer Tools Qt Designer. More powerful. Resource Editor. Limited Capabilities.

Manual GUI Design Easy and intuitive Tedious

Documentation Excellent Just 18MB MSDN Lib To be Documentation Excellent. Just 18MB, integrated, and easy browsing & search.

MSDN Lib. To be purchased, bulky, and search & browsing not easy

Unicode Support Every string is Qstring To support unicode, codepp y g Q g(natively unicode). Conversions available.

pp ,changes are required. Problems due to DLL mismatches.

Qt Vs MFC

Feature Qt MFC

I t ti li ti J t i l th d t () t k C l d Internationalization Just single method tr() takes care. XML-based QtLinguist, supporting reusability also.

Complex procedure involving string tables, LoadString(), conversions, updates, overlaps.p , p

Concept of Resources

No such concept. Only readable code.

Mostly, dependent on resources – can be edited using VS, Conflict problems

Cost Free under GPL for Unix flavors and non-commericalWin apps. For commercial, Wi t i $1 0 Still

Visual Studio has free MFC SDK

Win apps, cost is $1550. Still worth investing it.

Distribution Names its DLL explicitly (qt-mt404 dll) So no problems

Can rely on Windows DLL MFC42 dll If required to mt404.dll) So no problems MFC42.dll . If required to update then can cause problems to other programs.

Qt Vs MFC

Feature Qt MFC

Mi ll Ri h Wid t XML N/W API DB API STL Miscellaneous Richer Widgets, XML support, Robust Templates classes, Memory Managements, N/W API, DB

N/W API, DB API, STL exists but not as powerful as in Qt. No built-in XML parser, memory g , / ,

API, OpenGL API, Canvas, CSS

p , ymanagement.

Qt Vs MFC

Conclusions

Things can be done in both Qt & MFC but

- Qt is technically betterQ y

- Memory, Speed, and Programmer efficient

Qt is available with its own IDE: Qt CreaterQ Q

- Using 3rd party libraries may require tweaking

Also, available as Visual Studio plug-in, p g

- Tweaking not required for lib supported by VS but Qt used in limited way.

MySQL Vs Oracle

MySQL OracleFeatures DB2 SQL Server MySQL OracleFeatures DB2 SQL Server

MySQL Vs Oracle

Feature MySQL Oracle

Vendor Initially, MySQL AB. Now, Oracle Inc.

Oracle Inc.

Open Source/ Proprietary Open Source ProprietaryOpen Source/ Proprietary Open Source Proprietary

System Requirements Lesser compared to Oracle More compared to MySQL

Limitations/Restrictions Constrained by OS / HW Oracle imposed constraints

Platform Supported Multiple Multiple

Languages Supported Multiple Multiple

Cost Community Server: $0 -no support.Enterprise Subs: $595+/server

$24000/ CPU including support & updates

MySQL Vs Oracle

Conclusions

- Oracle is industry player

- MySQL is technically bettery Q y

- MySQL performance is comparable to Oracle

- Used by Google, Yahoo, …. Growing user basey g , , g

Future of MySQL

Future of MySQL

VC++ 6.0 Vs Visual Studio 2008

Advantages of Visual Studio 2008 over Visual C++ 6.0:Much more standards compliant C++ compiler with better template Much more standards compliant C++ compiler, with better template handlingSupport for x64 / mobile / XBOX targets Improved STL implementationSupport for C++0x TR1 (smart pointers, regular expressions, etc)Secure C runtime libraryImproved code navigationImproved debugger; possibility to run remote debug sessionsImproved debugger; possibility to run remote debug sessionsBetter compiler optimizationsMany bug fixesFaster builds on multi-core/multi-CPU systems/ yImproved IDE user interface, with many nice featuresImproved macro support in the IDE; DTE allows access to more IDE methods and variablesUpdated MFC library (in VS2008 Service Pack 1)Updated MFC library (in VS2008 Service Pack 1)

VC++ 6.0 Vs Visual Studio 2008

Disadvantages of moving to Visual Studio 2008:

The IDE is a lot slower than VS6

Intellisense still has performance issues (replacing it with VisualAssistX can help)

Sid b id bli k d l t h Side-by-side assemblies make app deployment much more problematic

The local (offline) MSDN library is extremely slowThe local (offline) MSDN library is extremely slow

Third-party tools support is fewer for Visual Studio 2008 e.g. there's no profiler in the Professional version

References

Qt Vs MFC:Qhttp://phil.freehackers.org/index.html

http://qt.nokia.com

MySQL Vs Oraclehttp://builderau.au.com/architect/database

http://www mysql orghttp://www.mysql.org

VC ++ 6.0 Vs Visual Studiohttp://stackoverflow.com/questions/62389/what-are-the-http://stackoverflow.com/questions/62389/what are thedifferences-between-visual-c-6-0-and-visual-c-2008

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