Should VB be my pc tool?

[MikeDutcher]

I am an actuary for a state agency. Our database is about a million records. Until now, all processing has been done on a mainframe. The pc was too slow, the disk space too small, and the mainframe had the advantage of being there first.

Now I have a pc with 512 MB RAM, 40 GB drive, 1+ GHz processor. The disk space and speed are sufficient to explore coming off the mainframe and processing the data on the pc.

The agency is comitted to the MICROSOFT OFFICE 2000 suite.

I am finding that ACCESS is very useful, but there are times I would like to process a file without going through a database.

I have VB 6.0. I don't think I need most of the "stuff". I just want to read in my text stream records, parse them into their fields, and perform all sorts of math on the data.

Should VB 6.0 be my tool?

I was reading Hardcore Visual Basic by Bruce McKinney to familiarize myself with the language.

I went to his web site and was distressed to read his opinions on VB 7.0.

I am leery about taking the time to learn a tool that may cause me grief with each new version.

Any counsel out there?

 

[woyler]

As far as simply reading in text files, VB is easy and secure. One thing I would strongly caution you against(unless I read you wrong) is the idea of using MS ACCESS to replace your mainframe. I would look into something along the lines of ORACLE, or if you hav to stay MS, then SQL Server.

 

[Terpsfan]

I agree with the above response. Access isn't meant for databases with a recordset of a million records. I wouldn't fool with Oracle because it is SIGNIFICANTLY more expensive than SQL Server. You could get a license for SQL Server for a couple G's. SQL Server 2000 works very well with Visual Basic 6.0, and since it's a Microsoft product is going to work more seamlessly with anything Bill Gates. You could always use Access as the front end to the SQL Server backend, it's all a matter of prefence. Access just shouldn't be your backend of choice.