database

Lynn Fredricks lynn at paradigmasoft.com
Mon Oct 24 11:07:00 EDT 2005


> Not to say Lynn is wrong but if a database is well organized 
> in terms of functionality, it can beat the pants of a 
> compiled database which woudl suffocate with too much information. 

Right, but what you are talking about here is a developer skill issue more
than anything. Its even easier for the tortoise to beat the hare if the hare
has been drinking margaritas all day long :-)

> Call it the space-folding starship... 
> 
> Before valentina existed, i had to port a database from a PC 
> to Macs for a professional product.
> Some 700000 records with relational links on which FileMaker 
> just choked...

No surprise there.

> It took HC 3 days to import the data but after that it was 2 
> seconds access even on a CDROM...
> But preparing the information was paramount for this trick 
> which we can't all afford... 

Right, it depends on what you are trying to do and what you need. But I
think any statement of 2 seconds needs to be clarified -- 2 seconds
to...what? Search 700,000 records and return what kind of information and
how?

> Surely if i had Valentina then, i could have said it choked 
> on that many records... ;) And any database can be tuned for 
> optimum performance one way or another for specific data sets...

Like the hare above, if you feed him margaritas all day first, sure. But
that many records isnt a challenge to Valentina unless its been hobbled.

> The free stuff usually takes longuer to develop though ;)

I think this is a dangerous sort of generalization. 

Many early mac power users back in the pre-PPC days learned that you could
store data inside a resource fork. It worked very well and very fast to
access small amounts of data. But, the resource fork wasn't designed for
that purpose, so you eventually run into limits. And, resource forks really
werent designed to work in the world of databases, so scaling up from such a
solution, when you needed to, was a problem.

With products like Revolution, you have a very useful metaphor for dealing
with data that can do almost any kind of user interaction. But why press it
into doing something when some other tool is better suited and therefore,
you produce a superior and more flexible end result?

Another comparison: there was a very interesting series of articles in
Photoshop User magazine in which the writer created a really detailed 3D
looking picture of a bar, all using photoshop skills. Cool, and okay, you
can achieve such things over a course of a very long time. But, I could have
a 3D guy do that in hours in comparision, and, if I didn't like the angle, I
can turn the camera in the 3D scene and rerender -- while the Photoshop guy
would probably have to recreate the entire scene. Is the Photoshop artist's
time worth x15 less than that of the 3D guy? If so, refer him to me, I have
some work for him to do at sub-minimum wage.

Best regards,

Lynn Fredricks
President
Paradigma Software, Inc

Joining Worlds of Information

Deploy True Client-Server Database Solutions
Royalty Free with Valentina Developer Network
http://www.paradigmasoft.com








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