Third-generation versus fourth-generation software development

A case study examines how fourth-generation languages do well and how they come up short compared to their predecessors. Two fourth-generation tools dBase III and PC/Focus were used, and a solution in Cobol was developed to use as a benchmark for third-generation-language performance. For each solution, development effort, code size, and performance characteristics were examined. It was found that even though the code sizes were smaller with both fourth-generation tools, Cobol was clearly superior in performance. It took longer to develop the solution in Cobol than in dBase III but less time than in PC/Focus.<>