timk@egvideo.UUCP (Tim Kuehn) (06/08/89)
I am doing an informal survey of the various dbase III/+ type database packages out in the world today and what their users think of them. As this is not anything near formal all comments are welcome - from ease of programmability to speed to thoughts about the company (no excessively long flames though please!). Essentially I'm interested in what you, the user community thinks about the various packages. Some applicable questions I can think of to consider would be: 1) Speed 2) Ease of programming 3) Package reliability 4) Responsiveness of the manufacturer to user input 5) Manufacturer support 6) User interface from a programmer's and end user's perspective 7) Cost effectiveness (were the features/functionality it gave you worth the $$$ you shelled out for it?) 8) Portability - application in single-user and multi-user environemnts (read Novell/networking and/or Xenix) and how easy was it to port between them. 9) Other catagories you may think of. Please feel free to express any and all thoughts you have on the packages you've ACTUALLY used. (Opinions about the recent A-T/Fox SW legal proceedings aren't really relavent to this since I'm only looking for information on the DBMS from an applications standpoint. If you disagree with this feel free to say so). If enough people respond to this I'll summarize to the net. +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Timothy D. Kuehn timk@egvideo | |TDK Consulting Services !watmath!egvideo!timk | |871 Victoria St. North, Suite 217A | |Kitchener, Ontario, Canada N2B 3S4 (519)-741-3623 | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
emuleomo@yes.rutgers.edu (Emuleomo) (06/14/89)
> In reference to the article on Dbase III+ compatible database survey > from timk@egvideo.UUCP > If you ask me, there are only 2 clones out there. a) Foxbase plus and b) Clipper Choosing between these 2 can be difficult but you may consider the following points. Foxbase plus Clipper ============ ======= Integrated Env. Yes No Interpreter Yes No (check a product called Dclip) Dbase III+ compatibility Unrivalled Too many deviations (Supports ¯os even better than DbaseIII+ !!) Compiler Yes Yes Debugger Limited Yes Overall speed Fastest Just a shade slower Can produce EXE files No Yes Feature set Quite rich Richer Third party support Extensive Unrivalled Overall reliability Most reliable A few bugs here and there Personal bias:- Go with Foxbase plus. (Coming out soon is DbIV compatible FOXPRO which promises to blow DBIV outa the water!!!) --Emuleomo O.O. (emuleomo@yes.rutgers.edu) -- ** Research is what I'm doing when I dont know what I'm doing! **
jack.bzoza@canremote.uucp (JACK BZOZA) (06/17/89)
My experience has been limited primarily to dBase and dBase clones. I
first learned dBase II on CP/M 8" disks and have always considered the
learning curve of other database programs too steep to justify climbing.
I have toyed with other databases but I have not yet come upon an
application that I couldn't do with my current dBase-like program.
These have gone from dBase II, dBase III, dBase III+, Foxbase 2.1
I switched to Foxbase about a year ago and find that it blows dBase
away.
1) Speed
- about 6 to 10 times faster than dBase
2) Ease of programming
- the same programming language but with a considerable number of
valuable extensions including UserDefinedFunctions, Menus, etc.
3) Package reliability
- haven't seen a crash or lost an index yet. Fixed many of dBase's
bugs
4) Responsiveness of the manufacturer to user input
- haven't had any reason to find out
5) Manufacturer support
- as above
6) User interface from a programmer's and end user's perspective
- same as dBase - i.e. so-so
7) Cost effectiveness
- absolutely worth the $$$
8) Portability
- versions available for DOS, SCO UNIX, Novell
- no fiddling necessary as the programs will run once additional code
has been inserted for running in a multi-user environment but
utilities exist which will go through the code and put in all the
record locking stuff for you
Be <C>hatting with you.....
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