August 5, 2002 at 3:08 pm
I just had a consultant tell me that a Visual Foxpro database can be made to offer better performance than SQL server! (If you know what your doing was the phrase used). I would have thought this to be laughable, but this guy is apparently quite highly respected. Does anyone in the group know if this is the case.
TIA
August 5, 2002 at 3:39 pm
Fox runs on DBase format files.
can it be better in a query? Yes. definitely not more scalable or robust.
FYI, a text file might be better in some cases, not not always (or usually).
Steve Jones
August 5, 2002 at 5:04 pm
Well actually yes, Foxpro is faster than SQL in many cases. This was originally due to the Rushmore technology that Fox Software developed, which was subsequently adopted by Microsoft in other product lines, such as the Jet engine. There used to be a rule of thumb that said that if you had less than 25 users, Foxpro would be faster than SQL. However with the advent of multi-processor servers and lower TCO that is probably not so relevant these days. Having said that, Visual Foxpro is an excellent development tool, both for client development and middleware, as Microsoft will tell you. I may also add that unlike certain other Visual languages, Foxpro has not had 5 and more ways of accessing back end data, lol.
Regards
Simon, UK (Fox user since before 1.02...)
August 6, 2002 at 2:47 am
Another Fox user since Fox/Dbase came out.
I can not think a text file would be better(?) in any circumstances other than ease of data interchange
We have rewritten our entire line of business application in Visual FoxPro 7 using SQL server backend (not native VFP tables). For applications - small numbers of modern desktop users on a well connected LAN (not low bandwidt WAN) with small (say < 1 million records) tables native VFP is very fast. However you don't get restore in time, rollback of transactions if the power fails, security, replication, hundreds of users etc etc of SQL server. Pays your money, takes your choice with applications. A modern SQL server installation, correctly written will also be very fast. Not much difference to the users in performance except VFP back end is free and requires less maintenance than SQL (none in my experience unless the power goes and indexes corrupt).
For quick and dirty desktop analysis / queries / modelling in my companys small/medium size business area it is both unknown and unmatched. With the tables on my desktop (1 line of code to get SQL tables/queries into VFP format in our framework !) I can query them to get useful business answers and manipulate them with the data centric language to get complex answers miles faster than using the SQL server backend direct with any other tool I can think of. In query performance and the replace(update) command in such circumstances it is significantly faster than SQL server - however we don't have the budget for the mega SQL servers now available that would probably match it in performance. For this type of work I much prefer this ISAM tool (which I have used for years and years) to SQL server.
As Simon says, it is an excellent mature OOP development tool for all areas and undoubtedly the Cinderella of the MS dev tool range.
August 6, 2002 at 8:31 am
Not bashing Fox, in fact, I used Visual Fox (first version) to rewrite a Fox for DOS app into Windows with a SQL 65 backend. It worked great, though in 1996, some queries were slower.
However, the OOP of VFP was fantastic. After the first 8-9 months, we made tremendous progress and updates and enhancements were very quick.
A text file might be faster in some environments, especially web environments, when a client (web server) can cache the values and read this much quicker than making a connection, sending a query, retreiving and processing results. XML is an example of where this works, especially in large environments. It can be more scalable.
That being said, I agree with pretty much everything above and would say that while Fox can be faster, it also leaves you hanging more. You have a higher likelihoos of corruption, etc. Go with SQL if you will have any more than 10 people. Especially now that msde can be used, not sure it's worth running with Fox/Access or anything else.
Steve Jones
Viewing 5 posts - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply