MOCA Client Comparison

Thanks to the open framework of RedPrairie^tm MOCA^tm framework we have a few options when it comes to the clients that can access the MOCA Server. I wanted to compare the clients to see how they are different from each other. If there are features that I have missed, let me know so that I can put them here as well.

	RedPrairie 2012 WinMSQL	Lexedit	Oracular MOCA Client 2012.1.0
Version	2012.1.4	2.8.4.1	2012.1.0
Technology	Microsoft	Microsoft	Pure Java
Auto Complete SQL	No	Yes	Yes
Auto Complete MOCA Commands	No	Yes	Yes
Security - restrict access	Yes	No	Yes
Trace Viewer	This one is much better than earlier versions	Very nice trace viewer. Can serve as default trace viewer	Very nice trace viewer.
Explain SQL	No	Yes	No
Load CSV files on client	No	Yes	Yes
mload server files	No	No	Yes
Edit Server Files	No	No	Yes. Offers security based on roles to disable for some users
Search Source code	No	No	Yes. Search files and code in database tables
Compare two environments	No	No	Yes
Automatic Updates	No	Yes	Yes
Cost	Comes with RedPrairie client	Free - requires registration	Free - no registration
Company	RedPrairie (www.redprairie.com)	Orbital Services (www.lexedit.com)	Oracular (www.oracular.com)
Download From	n/a	www.lexedit.com	autoupdate.oracular.com/mocaclient

Here is the details for each feature:

Technology	I do not see this as a really distinguishing feature unless you want to run Oracular MOCA Client on a mac or unix
Security - Restrict Access	This is an important feature. All of these tools basically provide the same capability as "Server Command Operations" - so if someone does not have that access, they should not be able to gain access via these tools as well. Specifically the menu option SALSrvCmdOpr controls access to the standard "Server Command Operations" screen which allows a user to execute any MOCA command. Oracualar MOCA client will see if the user who is attempting to connect has this permission. If the user does not have this permission then they will not be allowed access to Oracular MOCA client as well
Edit Server Files	Often the system administrators do not like to give access to the server to edit source code. Oracular MOCA Client allows the developer to navigate to the files using MOCA protocol and update the source code. This is really nice for such situations.
mload server files	Same idea as above - if you do not have command line access to the db/data directory, Oracular MOCA Client allows you to navigate to the files, right click on them and load them via mload
Search Source Code	In Oracular MOCA Client, you can put in a regular expression - it will search through the source code tree on the server and find what you are looking for. It can also create a tree which tells what calls what. It can also search through algorithms and DDAs
Compare two environments	Oracular MOCA client allows you to point to two environments and compare the data .

Some distinguishing features of each product are as follows:

RedPrairie WinmSQL	It has come a long way since the earlier versions that really prompted folks to develop lexedit and oracular moca client New version offers syntax highlighting via setup file New version offers multiple connections
Lexedit	This is the first "reaction" to how awful winmsql really was and it has been constantly improving. Some interesting features include: Very nice overall feel - looks very mature Tips Integrates standard Windows concepts like customizable toolbar Elaborate language setup - it views MSQL as one of many languages it can support 80 column guide is interesting to write code that is easily viewable on old terminals
Oracular MOCA Client	This is more of a full development environment (IDE) rather than simply a replacement for RedPrairie WinMSQL: Integrates with Orcular's change management Web Clipboard (experimental). Idea is that you copy text to cloud and paste from cloud on another machine. Robot development via groovy Repository of commonly used scripts Save current state in a named file