HELP Paradox vs Access vs Foxpro vs ????????????
Diane - ah what a beautiful name! ...sorry, it was quite special to
me oh so many many years ago....so I must admire it.....forgive
me if it is a lewd comment...
- can we assume you mean under windows?
: 1. Paradox
- - - - - - - - -
: 1. Whether they are object-oriented, hirearchial or relational?
you can code with a very 'oopish' style, but the dbase is
not actually OODBMS....pdox is relational actually.
: 2. What the reporting capabilities are like
quite good. You can do a lot of nifty things with it...
the report generator will probably be able to do everythin g
you need...
: 3. How easy they are to interface with your application using C++
- Paradox has a way of accessing .dlls from within it, so you
have access to anything, which can be placed in a .dll..
: 4. Built-in forms interface? Modifiable?
- Paradox dev centers around forms, where a form is an object,
you can place objects on it, and add code to them to alter their
default characteristics.
: 5. Any other Pros/cons or any other suggested databases (low-cost preferred)?
Pros=
I like Paradox/Win (PW) alot. The programming nature is very
intuitive to anyone who is familiar with oop (IMHO). You pretty
much draw your interface, then add code to the objects you
placed on the screen.....
Coding is very OOPish, although it's not totally OOP, so you
can create containers, and reuse your code for different apps,
as well as extend functionality through C++ calls
Cons
----
Well, right off the bat, you need lots of memory, that's
just the way it goes....although we may see a better optimized
version in the future. You'll need ideally 8 Megs, the box
says 4, 6 recommended- but 8 is pretty good....
If you are coming over from Paradox4.0/dos, don't expect
to do any ports of your code (although some you can sneak by
with ;-), but overall, the programming style is a departure
from pdox/dos [this is what I use...a good bit]
There is an initial learning curve for the
language/programming, as it is very oopish, so if you don't
know oop, it'll take some getting use to.
You can graph, and also put graphs into reports. Another
'nice'...really nice tool is you can draw your relationships
between tables, and PW will pretty much automatically create
them for you.... much like ER diagrams ?
OLE and DDE links are also supported....you can also
have a OLE field(!!!) ...memo fields...and BLOBS, so pictures
are fair game here too.
--- I like pdox alot, so I can comment a bit here. As far as the others
go I am merely giving you my 'research' of them, as I am
heading towards both foxpro and access very soon. I'll probably
get both next month.....no I'm not nuts, my work requires it.
: Access
- - --- ----
: 1. Whether they are object-oriented, hirearchial or relational?
claims relational, but I don't know.
: 2. What the reporting capabilities are like
these are very good also. Oh did I say graphing is here too?
(also in pdox/win)
: 3. How easy they are to interface with your application using C++
- I imagine you can pull .dlls here too,
: 4. Built-in forms interface? Modifiable?
- yes. yes modifiable.
: 5. Any other Pros/cons or any other suggested databases (low-cost preferred)?
- this one take some memory too. The language used in
development is very visual-basic-ish.
- they digress from standard dbase type things, inconsistent ui
sometimes, or so I heard.. but pretty good.
: 3. Foxpro
-- - - - - -
: 1. Whether they are object-oriented, hirearchial or relational?
...hmm...flat file db I think....trying to be relational, but
: 2. What the reporting capabilities are like
: 3. How easy they are to interface with your application using C++
same .dlls
: 4. Built-in forms interface? Modifiable?
yes, and pretty good screen-builder, at least it was on dos
platform...absolutely modifiable.
: 5. Any other Pros/cons or any other suggested databases (low-cost preferred)?
Pros
Fast! The fastest one out of these 3 dbases.
Cons
this is a direct port from dos. In fact (maybe not a con),
you can supposedly run a dos foxpro program unaltered under
windows .... the code is pure dbase (xbase style).... not
exactly what you would expect for a windows development
language IMHO.
if you want more details, check out last months Windows
Magazine, they did a big review of these 3 plus Superbase..I
think.
That's where I got some of this info from....but fox is fast.
and paradox is the best overall.
hope this helped.
forward me any responses you get, I always like to keep
increasing my knowledge-base, if that isn't asking too much.
: * Sr. Software Stylist
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^-- explain please!
ciao good day to you dianne
