[erlang-questions] QUestions about erlang

[Ulf Wiger (TN/EAB)]

glpunzi@REDACTED wrote:
> Hi all
> 
> My name is Giuseppe Luigi, and I write from Murcia, Spain.

Nice part of the world. I spent my honeymoon driving around
near Altea and once had the pleasure of celebrating San Juan
in Alicante. (:


> At the moment, we want start 2 new project (well, more projects,
 > but now this is the most important). One, will be a Point Of Sale
 > software, and the other a little app to connect to a MS Access
 > database for some maintenance tasks, and I have some questions.
> 
> - Is erlang fast?

Most likely fast enough for this type of application.
If you connect to MS Access via ODBC, communication
cost is likely to be the dominating factor.

> - How is the persistence/database connection?

Erlang has a built-in persistent database which you
might find useful from time to time. But if your
primary target is MS Access, then the ODBC application
is probably what you want.

http://www.erlang.org/doc/apps/odbc/index.html

I'll let someone else account for experiences using
Erlang's ODBC with MS Access.

> - Is fully object oriented?

Yes. (:

Actually, you will find that Erlang follows other
modeling principles (concurrency-oriented programming
using a mostly functional language). It is by no means
less powerful than an OO language

I noted Christian's answer, so I will refer to his mail
on the next three:
> - What about graphical interface for the apps? and web frontend?
> - PocketPC, Palm support?
> - What about the community for support?

> - Spanish erlang-developers?

The ones I know of are Universidade da Coruña, and some
good people at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.

Then of course, there is LambdaStream:
http://www.lambdastream.com/web/

BR,
Ulf W