Comparisons of GUI toolkits,

RDBMS, and Development

Environments

Prepared By:

Syed Feroz Zainvi

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

 Highlights

yQ
Qt Vs MFC
y MySQL Vs Oracle
y VC 6.0 Vs Visual C++ 2008
 Qt Vs MFC

Feature Qt MFC
O
Overview
i G hi l C
Graphical C++ ttoolkit
lkit Graphical
G hi l toolkit
t lkit for
f
Windows OS
Vendor Initially, Trolltech. Now, Microsoft
Nokia
Year of Introduction 1994 Mid 90’s
Object Orientation Clearly Object Oriented Object oriented wrapper
over Win32 API
(Awful C/C++ Mix)
Platforms Windows, Unix flavors, Mac, Windows
Supported Embedded Devices
Design Model Does not force any design Forces use of
model Document/View model and
p
templates. Leads to
Difficulties.
Consistency Consistent: naming, Lesser consistency, More
hierarchy, class organization tricks
 Qt Vs MFC

Feature Qt MFC
Communication
C i ti Signal-Slot
Si l Sl t callback
llb k Event-driven
E td i fframework.
k
Mechanism mechanism. Simple & Not easy leading to
Powerful. problems sometimes.
Layout Mechanism Supported Not supported leading to
problems when resized or
translated
Designer Tools Qt Designer. More powerful. Resource Editor. Limited
Capabilities.
Manual GUI Design Easy and intuitive Tedious
Documentation Excellent. Just 18MB
Excellent 18MB, MSDN Lib.
Lib To be
integrated, and easy purchased, bulky, and
browsing & search. search & browsing not easy
pp
Unicode Support Everyy string
g is Q
Qstring
g To support
pp unicode,, code
(natively unicode). changes are required.
Conversions available. Problems due to DLL
mismatches.
 Qt Vs MFC

Feature Qt MFC
I t
Internationalization
ti li ti Justt single
J i l method
th d tr()
t () takes
t k Complex
C l procedure
d
care. XML-based QtLinguist, involving string tables,
supporting reusability also. LoadString(), conversions,
updates,
p , overlaps.
p
Concept of No such concept. Only Mostly, dependent on
Resources readable code. resources – can be edited
using VS, Conflict problems
Cost Free under GPL for Unix Visual Studio has free MFC
flavors and non-commerical SDK
Win apps. For commercial,
Wi apps, costt iis $1
Win $1550.
0 Still
worth investing it.
Distribution Names its DLL explicitly (qt- Can rely on Windows DLL
mt404 dll)ÆSo no problems MFC42.dll
mt404.dll)ÆSo MFC42 dll . If required to
update then can cause
problems to other programs.
 Qt Vs MFC

Feature Qt MFC
Mi ll
Miscellaneous Richer
Ri h Widgets,
Wid t XML N/W API,
API DB API,
API STL
support, Robust Templates exists but not as powerful as
classes, Memory in Qt. No built-in XML
Managements,
g , N/W
/ API,, DB parser,, memoryy
p
API, OpenGL API, Canvas, management.
CSS
 Qt Vs MFC

Conclusions
Things can be done in both Qt & MFC but
- Q
Qt is technicallyy better
- Memory, Speed, and Programmer efficient
Qt is available with its own IDE: Q
Q Qt Creater
- 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
Features DB2 SQL Server MySQL Oracle Features DB2 SQL Server MySQL Oracle
 MySQL Vs Oracle

Feature MySQL Oracle

Vendor Initially, MySQL AB. Now, Oracle Inc.

Oracle Inc.
Open 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 - $24000/ CPU including

no support. support & updates
Enterprise Subs:
$595+/server
 MySQL Vs Oracle

Conclusions
- Oracle is industry player
- MySQL
y Q is technicallyy better
- MySQL performance is comparable to Oracle
- Used byy Google,
g , Yahoo,, …. Growing
g user base
Future of MySQL
Future of MySQL
 VC++ 6.0 Vs Visual Studio 2008

Advantages of Visual Studio 2008 over Visual C++ 6.0:

y Much more standards compliant C++ compiler
compiler, with better template
handling
y Support for x64 / mobile / XBOX targets
y Improved STL implementation
y Support for C++0x TR1 (smart pointers, regular expressions, etc)
y Secure C runtime library
y Improved code navigation
y Improved debugger; possibility to run remote debug sessions
y Better compiler optimizations
y Many bug fixes
y Faster builds on multi-core/multi-CPU
/ systems
y
y Improved IDE user interface, with many nice features
y Improved macro support in the IDE; DTE allows access to more IDE
methods and variables
y Updated MFC library (in VS2008 Service Pack 1)
 VC++ 6.0 Vs Visual Studio 2008

Disadvantages of moving to Visual Studio 2008:

y The IDE is a lot slower than VS6
y Intellisense still has performance issues (replacing it with
VisualAssistX can help)
y Side-by-side
Sid b id assemblies bli make k app d deployment
l t much
h
more problematic
y The local (offline) MSDN library is extremely slow
y Third-party tools support is fewer for Visual Studio 2008
e.g. there's no profiler in the Professional version
 References

yQ
Qt Vs MFC:
{ http://phil.freehackers.org/index.html

{ http://qt.nokia.com

y MySQL Vs Oracle
{ http://builderau.au.com/architect/database

{ http://www.mysql.org
http://www mysql org
y VC ++ 6.0 Vs Visual Studio
{ http://stackoverflow.com/questions/62389/what
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/62389/what-are-the-
are the
differences-between-visual-c-6-0-and-visual-c-2008
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