Will FoxPro handle this type of data load and cocurrent access?

[Guest_imported]

Hi,

Can anybody clear the confusion I am having. I am an Oracle programmer, but have programmed in Clipper/dBase for only about a year. So I don't have extensive experience in the Clipper/Foxpro/dbase. I think there isn't much difference between Clipper and FoxPro either. One of our customers want an accounting system (GL, AR, AP, Invoicing, Cashbook), but cannot afford the cost we are asking them to develop in Oracle. After many meetings where we tried to compromise and come to an agreement with the price he (the customer) decided that it was way beyond his budget. This customer is asking me whether to go ahead with a company which is doing development using FoxPro (Not visual, but the DOS version). I know this customer very well, so I want to give him the correct advice.

Since I don't have much FoxPro/dBase experience I thought of putting this to this forum. Can the forum members enlightn me as to wheter FoxPro/Dbase would handle a multi user, on-line accounting system for a farily large company. About 20 users will be using the system concurrently. OUt of the 20 about 7 will be using the on-line invoicing system. Also some of the files would definitely grow over 100,000 records in a few months time. I estimate some of the files to be around 25 to 30 MB in size with over 100,000 records. Will FoxPro handle this type of load. What about indexing. I have heard that clipper/foxpro/dbase systems have constant problems with indexes and the indexes have to be re-created periodically. Is this true? What about concurrent access by 20 odd users? Will it create locking problems?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated?

Thanks & regards,
CS

 

[FoxAl]

The specification you describe sounds tailor-made for a Foxpro DOS application in my experience.

Yes it will handle 20 users simultaneously very competently and as for 7 using on-line invoicing concurrently, multi-user processing within Foxpro is fairly simple.

As for 100,000 records within a database, this is nowhere near the limitations which Foxpro can handle.

Re-indexing of databases, as you explain, do get corrupted
occasionally, but then that is life in general. You could easily develop a couple of routines to allow daily housekeeping utilities such as re-indexing or re-building indexes from scratch on a periodic basis.

Depending on the complexity of your processing requirements and the amount of input/output required from the invoicing process, I would have estimated that your development times would vary from 1 month - 6 months.

I, myself have written an Invoicing module within another SOP system in the past and that took approx 8 weeks to develop.

Alternatively, you could consider buying an already developed accounting package such as Pegasus Opera (written in Foxpro DOS) and which allows developers to customise the application at certain points called Hooks.

HTH.

 

[ChrisCarroll]

Largest FoxPro system I've worked on is about 5 times the users and 5 times the table size of what you describe. It's about 6 years old.
I also second the comment about having a housekeeping job to do periodic reindexing. Once a week is fine, once a month is probably fine.

However I would query why anyone is offering a development in FoxPro for Dos, unless the customer specifically wants Dos. Even the pre-Visual FoxPro for Windows 2.6 offers a better GUI and hence easier functionality and shorter development time than working in Dos.

But yes, I'd have no worries about FoxPro being capable, even FoxPro for Dos.

 

[dgrewe]

FoxPro 2x will handle one million records or a database of 2gig whichever comes first.
David W. Grewe
Dave@internationalbid.com
ICQ VFP ActiveList #46145644

 

[zimbaliza]

Oppps it is 1 Billion Records, or 2 gigs
(1 billion being a logical flag = 2 gigs)

We have Fox 2.5a running at 40 sites (Point of Sale System)
with some of the bigger sites having 20 machines running
the invoicing module at once (normally on opening days)

Fox handles databases 100,000 records really easy, just when you get to 10-20 million records, it tends to slow down
a bit, or main sales database is 1.2 gigs (2 years history)
since our head office upgrade to a faster network/faster machines, it hasen't really been an issue (500mhz 128 megs
100Mbit Network)

Re-indexing is a problem, you cannot re-index if someone
is using the database at the same time. we re-index our
sites once a week, if you code with flush's all over the
place, you can make it robust, we only have problems if
our novell servers loose power or something silly like that.
but Fast Machines & 100mbit network we can reindex a site within 5 mins, (P233 32megs 100mbit)

Our point of sale system has been in development since 92
I think since Foxpro 2.0, I have only been here 6 years.

Zim