: New Here...

[Jim Hurley]

>
>Message: 4
>Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 06:19:59 -0700
>From: Chuck Pelto <cbpelto at pcisys.net>
>Subject: New Here...
>To: use-revolution at lists.runrev.com
>Message-ID: <66E37CDE-20DC-11D8-8362-00306549C134 at pcisys.net>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
>
>Greetings,
>
>I'm looking for information to help me consider Revolution as an option
>for developing more sophisticated databases. I've just downloaded and
>unlocked the 30-day example version.
>
>I'm very familiar with FileMaker Pro. I'm somewhat familiar with Access.
>
>Is there anything someone can point me to that provides a compare and
>contrast analysis of Revolution to FMP?

Chuck,

Besides all the good advice you have received from others, I can tell 
you of one very special database use I have for Run Rev.

I am in the midst of an election campaign. The database is 90,000 
records (lines) each with 75 fields (items).

But the data as it comes to us from the county needs lots of 
massaging: Convert fields to title case, change phone numbers like 
5303458765 to 530-345-8765 so that it can be dialed by someone with 
ADD, picking out households with multiple residents, some with the 
same last name and some not, and working the data to get single more 
personalized mailer to the related household members and a separate 
mailer to unrelated individuals at the same address (not the usual 
impersonal mailer sent to all residents at the same address)..... etc.

I was astonished to discover that the entire file can be accommodated 
in a single field (or imported from disk to a variable.) within Run 
Rev.

Some of the scripting can be done in FMP but it is soooooooo much 
easier to do it all in Run Rev (and much faster, both in scripting 
and run time) and then exporting a file to be imported into FMP. From 
that point on, FMP is the application of choice.

But this is only one of the very many things I have found to do with 
this extraordinary tool.

Run Rev is a tool box. FMP is a screwdriver.

Jim