Advice Wanted - MS Access vs. MS Visual FoxPro

[ProNetGroup]

I was just wondering if some kind soul could give me some advice as to whether or not my company should use Access or Visual FoxPro. I know that there are several considerations that must be taken into account, but basically I wanted to know if Visual FoxPro is a good, solid application and if it was better/worse than Access. Some considerations include:

-Small company, about 20 employees total, but growing quickly
-Average about 60 new files per month
-About to open a second office in a different city, and maybe another soon after

Thanks so much, I appreciate everyone's opinions!!!
Eubanks

 

[JBalcerzak]

It depends on the requirements of your application. Without knowing anything about your situation, the one thing I would recommend is that if any of your tables have over 30,000 records in them, use FoxPro - if not Access would be just fine. I regularly work with tables that are several million records - Access would still be trying to query them. Rushmore Technology in FoxPro allows for very fast performance in very large tables.

 

[ProNetGroup]

Completely understood about the "it depends" part. But what I hear you saying is that there is nothing particularly wrong with VFP, right? It is just not the most common database application that MS offers b/c Access is.

Also, I have a pretty good understanding of programming Access in VBA...is Visual FoxPro hard to learn? Or would having a background in VBA for Access make it simple?

 

[Mike Gagnon]

Eubanks

I have been programming with VFP for a long time, I never used Access, so I cannot really comment on that, but I chose FoxPro, because the company I work for required flexibility, able to handle over 100,000 records quickly and easy to maintain. Like I said I never used Access before, so all these criterias may apply to Access (although from way I hear the handling of 100,000 records might be a factor).
I believe the programming language of Access is more like VB and C++ then FoxPro. So the learning curve might be a little steep, but all I can say if your company (or you) chooses FoxPro, you'll never look back.
Mike Gagnon

 

[robrts]

I would like to start off by saying there is nothing wrong with VFP.

It has a group of supporters (developers) that number in the hundreds of thousands. It is not a tool that MS gives away as with Access (in Office Professional and above). It is a full development tool on the level of Visual Basic in terms of robustness and exceeds VB6 in Object Oriented support.

MS Access is aimed at the End-User community, while VFP is aimed at the Development community. This is not to say that you cannot create productive applications with Access, but it designed for simplicity and is basically a glorified flat file system.

VFP is an Object Oriented language built around a relational database that supports triggers, transactions, etc.

Ease of use/ Learning:

I find that persons with a development background using MS based tools can quickly grasp the initial concepts of VFP and be productve. If that person has a background in Object Oriented programming that learning curve is reduced.

The good thing is that VFP does provide a number of wizards that help the novice developer create usable applications, though they lack in flexibility.

You might want to consider one of the commercial frameworks that exist that will provide a great amount of the infrastructure for building the applications. A number of them also include wizards that will help create the additional forms required.

Good Luck moving forward and if you have additional questions keep posting here as ther are a number of people willing to help

Robert

 

[ProNetGroup]

Thanks for all the advice!!! I basically just wanted to make sure that VFP was a superior product, instead of just assuming that it was. With all that said, I have enough information about each application to decide which would work better for our company. If we choose VFP, then I now feel confident that we won't be choosing an inferior product.

Thanks again for the input, and anyone else out there who reads this thread I still welcome your opinions also!!!

 

[darrellblackhawk]

Eubanks:

JBalcerzak and robrts comments echo my own.

I program in both (Access since 1.0, Fox since Dbase). Although I must admit, the only thing I use Access for now is transferring data between platforms - it is particularly well suited for quick and dirty translation of file formats.

Also, Access does not scale well in a multi-user environment and paraphrasing JBalcerzak - 'record size limitations will seriously cause you headaches'.

You'll find a large support community ready to help with any FoxPro issues that arise.

Good Luck!

Darrell

 

[monikai]

Hi !!
From my practice (3 years ago):
when I used Access to do query (sort, join tables and choose records) from big tables, I must use some computers (i don't remember: 3 machines ???) and time was very long (12 hours ???).
But I think that Access is very friendly for new users which know very little about programming (Access is easy for simple activity).
Monika Kind regards to you all from Warsaw !!!!!

 

[kenith]

Small companies have a propensity to become large companies more quickly than expected. Inability to grow company systems at a pace adequate to support company goals can impede and in some cases prevent growth. Your research into a database language for the support of your company is well taken.

I am more opinionated than others might be. Given the situation you describe there is no question as to my course of action. VFP. I would assume the company to grow and continue to put pressure on existing systems; while generating need for new systems. I view ACCESS as a nice little thing to have around – and it might someday grow up to be VFP level.

I try not to use a hammer to kill a fly. I make sure, however, that I have a hammer.

Ken
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