Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!ig!bionet!agate!violet.berkeley.edu!steve
From: steve@violet.berkeley.edu (Steve Goldfield)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Switch to FoxBase
Message-ID: <22966@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 12 Apr 89 16:31:22 GMT
References: <22863@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <11943@ut-emx.UUCP>
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Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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I apologize for posting this, but I'm having a lot of trouble
sending mail.

In article <11943@ut-emx.UUCP> xdaa374@emx.UUCP (Bill Douglass) writes:
#>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

Bill,

Thanks for your response. What network software do you use with
your Ethernet connections? I've heard that Novell is due to
have a Mac version. Also, I presume that you have to install
boards to run Ethernet with Macs. That sounds expensive and
could be a problem with the two pluses in our network.

One thing we are considering is to connect our network to
a campus VAX 8850 which is offering essentially free use
as a file server. I'm not sure how that would affect the
speed if the Foxbase files reside in the VAX system.

Steve Goldfield