Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!xdaa374
From: xdaa374@ut-emx.UUCP (William T. Douglass)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Switch to FoxBase
Message-ID: <11943@ut-emx.UUCP>
Date: 12 Apr 89 02:38:30 GMT
References: <22863@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: xdaa374@emx.UUCP (Bill Douglass)
Organization: UTexas Computation Center, Austin, Texas
Lines: 42

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. The decision
>is prompted partly by prodding from other usenet posters
>and partly by Nantucket's lackluster performance at
>producing bugfree software and responding to problems.
>
>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.

First of all, I have found that regular LocalTalk (or PhoneNet, as we
use) is too slow for most of our needs.  It works fine with the network
version of FileMaker II, but the more complicated FoxBase applications
we have developed for our agency need better speed.  In steps EtherTalk.
I have found that, in general (always a disclaimer here) we can get speeds
from a Mac II running AppleShare serviceing another Mac II that equal the
performance of an SE running off its local hard drive.  This is especially
true with FoxBase, which does a lot of I/O in its multi-user configuration.
(A combination of record-locking overhead & bad handling of indexes in
multi-user mode.)  My recommendation: Ethernet your users if the speed is
critical.

Also, I find FoxBase to be a fairly good development environment for the
Mac (I have not used McMax - a recent MacWeek article did a comparison of
the two, I believe.)  The debugging & tracing capabilities, combined with
the screen real estate of a Mac II, make for a good productivity tool.

If you'ld like more details about what we're doing, e-mail me.

Bill...
-- 
Bill Douglass, TCADA

"I dreamed I was to take a test,
 in a Dairy Queen, on another planet."      L. Anderson