Choosing a development tool is influenced by four prominent considerations:
Type of integration
Capabilities of the toolset
Skills of the developer
Prerequisites of licensing to the end user
In this chapter we described how the following ten development tools fit into the considerations just mentioned:
Dexterity
VS Tools
Modifier with VBA
Continuum
Extender and eXtender Enterprise
DDE, ODBC, and ADO,and OLE Automation
Integration Manager
Table Import
eConnect
Web services
We looked at which of the tools would modify the user interface, add functionality, or just access the database directly. At the end of the day, the solution needs to meet the specification, be supportable, affordable, and upgradable.
The next chapter is more of a hands-on case study. We are going to use a couple of techniques discussed in this chapter to create a small integrating application using Dexterity.