database

[Bruce Robertson]

> no offense. no boasting...
> 
> I did the relational lookup in FMP, and it took minutes!
> 
> So I opted for a double-linked-list of records (this was a hierarchical
> database - the relations were previously based on a parent id but searching
> this was horribly slow...
> 
> So I made the search implicit by pre-creating the fetch index to the
> information. The relational didn't become flat but almost...
> 
> The DBF database this came from originally was just as fast... Which tells
> you lots about how macs were seen by the guy who hired me...
> 
> Im sure it wouldn't compete in the real world though, then again for a
> minimal
> functionality DB it did work wonders and it hardly used any xternals ;)

I would like to know more details about these claims. What version of
FileMaker, how long ago, did you talk to anybody who actually had some
FileMaker experience? Search results across 700,000 indexed records are
normally instantaneous.

There are some action - like summary calculations - which can definitely be
slow. If you were searching across a relationship, that used to be a known
problem in versions before 7 and there were techniques that could be used to
deal with it. But that, too, is no longer a problem and searches across
relationships are also fast now.