Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!dogie.macc.wisc.edu!uwvax!rutgers!cmcl2!ccnysci!alexis
From: alexis@ccnysci.UUCP (Alexis Rosen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: FoxBase vs 4D functional comparision request
Message-ID: <1794@ccnysci.UUCP>
Date: 29 Apr 89 10:07:11 GMT
References: <44629@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Reply-To: alexis@ccnysci.UUCP (Alexis Rosen)
Organization: City College of New York
Lines: 55

In article <44629@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Steve Neruda
<neruda@cis.ohio-state.edu> writes:
>How does FoxBase compare with 4D functionality wise?  How difficult is it to 
>  implement a multiuser database using Foxbase (do you have to do all the file
>  and record locking or does foxbase handle that, is foxbase still fast
>  running multiuser?).

Both Fox and 4D claim that they can automatically run single-user code in
multi-user mode. In both cases, you'd have to be crazy to do that. The
performance hits would be terrible. In Fox, some things won't work right
if you wrote things without thinking about the move to multi-user. For example,
    Replace field1 With "data"
won't work in m-u mode because the record isn't autolocked, but
    Replace Next 1 field1 With "data"
which does the same thing in single-user mode, will work properly in m-u mode.

Also, for Fox you'd have to write an error-handler to deal with situations
where you fail to achieve a lock. This is not difficult and there's an
example in the manual which works verbatim.

The nice thing about Fox is that all m-u code will work in a single-user
implementation. All of the m-u stuff becomes No-ops. Very convenient.

As for speed, that's a relative issue. It's very slow compared to single-user.
It's lightning-quick compared to all other Mac databases (not to mention the
only really safe one).

Version 2.0, which just went into Beta, is drastically improved in this
respect, but it's still much slower than single-user.

>  Can you send information to external ports from within
>  the program?  What about import export capabilities?

There's a built-in capability to send stuff out a serial port. It lets you
specify bps, parity, and handshake. This works very very well for printing
to high-speed serial printers with no Mac driver, for example. It can't
recieve stuff, but writing an XCMD to do that won't be too bad if you have
to do it.

Import and Export formats supported: Delimited text, "Basic" delimited text,
and SDF. Of course, any dbf file works without a need to import.

>Also I was told by our local (and less than helpful) software dealer
>  that you can only purchase the multiuser version through the company.

Bull. Try Mac Connection.

Demos can be had for $5 from Fox, but the accompanying documentation is
poor (but it will give you a taste of what Fox can do). The manuals for
single-user cover the commands for m-u mode.

---
Alexis Rosen
alexis@ccnysci.{uucp,bitnet}
alexis@rascal.ics.utexas.edu  (last resort)