> > VFP doesn't even compare with other RDBMS's in common use > > today. Yes, sometimes the speed is comparible, but the > > featureset lags far behind Oracle, MSSQL, and MySQL(free > > versions exist of MySQL and MSSQL; possibly Oracle, but I'm > > not as familiar).
> VFP was never designed to function as a database server, so I don't > consider that a fair comparison. For our market, small business and > niches within large companies, the power of VFP on LANS is just fine, > without our having to resort to high-end ($) products. VFP sucks bandwidth. 100Mbps LANs are a must for our application(10Mbps is noticeably slow). This is made worse by a problem with VFP that causes it to read the first 20 bytes of our dbc hundreds of times a second when running-- without oplocks(multiple stations), this causes our app to take 10 seconds to start! Compared to 1-2 seconds if there's an oplock. DBF's also are prone to corruption, can't be backed up online, and have no true security mechanism. We're comparing free to free(mysql/MSDE/MSSQL Express)-- not free to big $$$. > minimum dependencies on any other product. It's hard enough to master > and control one product. Being responsible for and having to master and > control multiple products at the development level is a proposition that > I've gone through great lengths to avoid. That sounds like a craftsman that insists on using one tool for every project-- be it a hammer, a screwdriver, etc. Sometimes you need to learn more than one tool to get the project done right. > My point was that the market, programmers, is heavy in the middle, not > the top, and the 'average' programmer isn't about to become master of > multiple products in any reasonable time frame. Therefore these people > are better served with a "general purpose Swiss Army Knife" that they > can do many things with today and also has plenty of room to grow with > tomorrow. Maybe that's where I don't understand-- most of the good programmers I know don't fit that 'average programmer' category, and rather are able to command more than one tool/language and excel at each. And then there are the slower amongst us-- I'm personally more than happy to leave them in the dust-- everyone can't be a programmer/developer. > You're into fancier screen stuff then I'm up to, so I can't offer an > answer to the problem you're seeing. No one can. Save maybe the VFP team themselves, but that's unlikely. I believe they're bitblting the screen and then drawing images on top and that's what's causing the flicker... I'm sure they did that for performance reasons with more 'normal' VFP applications, but our highly graphical application is not typical. > As to the "legacy" part, I don't even see it until someone mentions it. Go into VFP and create a normal control of any sorts on a form. Look at the property list-- heh, look at just for the form. You'll see a huge number of the properties are old properties and methods that are not used in the VFP age-- they're there for more legacy 2.x and older stuff. Many of the properties are even for MAC-- I can't understand why those couldn't have been hidden at some point, considering VFP9 can't even compile MAC VFP apps anymore, AFAIK... > > It's dying. xbase is a file-based RDBMS. The years of > > file-based RDBMS's ruling supreme are far behind us. We're in > > the time of server-based RDBMS's. > But you know it's also a client for the various backends, thus it's only > real weakness is not being a multi-user server engine itself. And even There goes one of(possibly the biggest) benefit of VFP-- it's data engine(save for local cursors where it's not as significant a feature and not used in n-tier apps as much). Beyond that, the only thing VFP offers beyond the other more mainstream tools would be a built-in report designer, as inferior as it is(improved in VFP9 somewhat). -- Derek _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
