LEGACY AND FREE TOOLS, ORACLE AND ERP SOLUTIONS

Development and comparison of business informatics solutions will be presented, starting with legacy solutions working in character mode (COBOL, dBase, Clipper, Novel Netware) and operating on minimalistic hardware, free Forms/Reports tools and databases (mySQL) and professional Oracle solutions and finally very expensive integrated ERP solutions, from the client/server architecture to three-tier architecture, from file system to relation database. Each of these solutions has its advantages and disadvantages, however, all these solutions, at its time, did the job correctly. New solutions are undoubtedly more advanced, have beautiful and fancy user interfaces, but also cost much more. Do they bring as much progress as they cost more? The author does not advocate a return to the stone home of informatics, believes that the latest solutions are often oversized for specific tasks and that their price is suitable primarily for large business systems that can easily absorb such costs and need reliable (e.g. clustering), standard, auditor-supported solutions and whose long-term policy oriented towards a reputable software vendor.