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From: rs5o+@andrew.cmu.edu (Randall Knowles Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: 4th Dimension
Message-ID: <UYBGaHy00WB50oe7cW@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: 1 Apr 89 19:57:07 GMT
Organization: Mathematics, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Lines: 20

I'm nearly finished with a 4th Dim. database here at CMU.
My thoughts and needs follow:
Comments on 4th Dimension:
The manual looks very good, and is quite authoritatively wrong or
misleading in some parts.  Not many, just enough to drive a beginner
mad.  Experts in Database programming probably wouldn't have any
problems.  Also, the program can be very slow at times; especially when
running in a multi-user environment off a server.  And this leads me into:

Questions:
This faster version of 4th Dim--Any due date at all?  Is it DEFINATELY
coming out?   I'm somewhat desparate, because, you see, I'm a college
student, just wrote my first 4th Dim. application, and it's SLOW.
It's a grading program, and the TA's using it (6 of them) are already
complaining.  Next semester we'll have 10 times as many TA's and
students.  My name is known, I don't want to be lynched.  So, I need
help speeding the thing up.  A new version of 4th dim. would be nice,
but barring that, can anything be done?  The major bottleneck at the
moment is disk access.  Ideas on how others have solved this problem
(loading everything into memory, etc) would be greatly appreciated