Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!elroy!hacgate!ashtate!dbase!awd From: awd@dbase.UUCP (Alastair Dallas) Newsgroups: comp.databases Subject: Re: dBase IV Bug(s)? Summary: You know my bias Message-ID: <62@dbase.UUCP> Date: 26 Apr 89 16:02:22 GMT References: <1762@muvms1.bitnet> <1719@ccnysci.UUCP> Organization: Ashton Tate Devlopment Center Glendale, Calif. Lines: 55 In article <1719@ccnysci.UUCP>, alexis@ccnysci.UUCP (Alexis Rosen) writes: > In article <54@dbase.UUCP> awd@dbase.UUCP (Alastair Dallas) writes: > >dBASE IV is a tremendous improvement over the dBASE III PLUS language, and > >Foxbase is merely a clone of III+. There are dozens of new commands and... > > Yes, dBase IV is a tremendous improvement over dBase III+. Saying that > FoxBase+ is only a clone of dBase III+ shows massive ignorance, however. > Most of the dBase IV improvements have existed in FoxBase for quite a while > (language improvements, that is). There are a few things that don't exist > in Fox, and there are many things that Fox does that dBase iV still doesn't > do. But I am not going to get into a features war- just listing the features > of either product would take days. > --- > Alexis Rosen I don't want to waste the net's time if this discussion isn't interesting to other people. Obviously, I'm one of the authors of dBASE IV--I think it's great; not only that, but I have a financial interest in it (my job), too. Perhaps I shouldn't have said "merely" a clone, but FoxBase+ offers very few improvements to III+--arrays, UDFs and multi-child relations come to mind. dBASE IV includes those (in a better implementation, in my opinion). But, there are a lot of things in IV which are not found in FoxBase+. For example: CALCULATE--one-pass financial and statistical functions all of SQL SCAN..ENDSCAN--single-pass database processing COPY TO ARRAY/APPEND FROM ARRAY--better than SCATTER/GATHER, in my opinion (COPY/APPEND work on data sets) printer drivers, sophisticated printer control keyboard macros scrollable, movable, overlapping, user-defined windows transaction processing (start/commit/rollback) LOOKUP() function for handling lookup tables interactive debugger ...and more... I don't mean to say that FoxBase+ is not better and much faster than dBASE III PLUS--it is an excellent clone with a few key improvements. But it's not fair to compare FoxBase+ with dBASE IV--not fair to FoxBase. Perhaps I'm demonstrating "massive ignorance" again, but what feature does FoxBase+ offer that is not found in dBASE IV? I think I'm treading very close to the net rules about commercialization. I'm on this newsgroup to learn things and to help with dBASE problems. If I've stepped out of line, I hope you'll tell me. People who like FoxBase+ _really_ like FoxBase+, to the point where it's not clear if they've actually looked at dBASE IV. /alastair/ Disclaimer: These are my opinions, no matter how much they may seem to be the corporate line. Suits (management and lawyers) still don't read the net, luckily.