alexis@ccnysci.UUCP (Alexis Rosen) (04/14/89)
In article <22863@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> steve@violet.berkeley.edu (Steve Goldfield) writes: >We are seriously considering moving a medium-sized >database (about 10 tables, maximum 6,000 records) >from McMax to Foxbase's networked version. [...] >I'd appreciate receiving Email on any potential problems >we may run into, especially in running the networked >Foxbase across our rather slow TOPS network. We are also >considering connecting our network to a VAX server, which >might improve performance. I'd also be interested in >hearing about reasonable alternatives, considering that >I have more than a hundred dBASEIII+ programs servicing >the database. Well. Two very important points. The good news is that you'll probably be able to convert 10 Megabytes of source in one day. (I know two people who have had that pleasure). Most of the work involves opening a source file, using the search command, seeing that nothing needs to be changed, and going on to the next file... The BAD NEWS: FoxBase+/Mac WILL NOT RUN MULTIUSER UNDER TOPS! This is NOT Fox's fault. No Multiuser DBMS can run under TOPS with record locking (despite the fact that Acius thinks that 4D can) because TOPS does not conform to the AFP protocals, which are needed for byte-range locking. The solution: use ANY other file server. In particular, the Vax will do the trick quite nicely. It will also give better performance, most likely. A note about performance: for files that Foxbase opens read/write in shared (not EXCLUSIVE) mode, expect a 50% slowdown. Obviously, it can't cache indices. (This effect will be seen with any good program, not just FB+). Other than this, there really are no gotchas- not that I've discovered in over a year of developement. Oh, one more thing- You don't need to run multiuser to run FB on a net, if only one person at a time is using any particular data file. In this case, TOPS is fine. Followups to c.s.mac. --- Alexis Rosen alexis@ccnysci.{uucp,bitnet}