Re: Oracle v7, ODBC, and VB

In article <2bmmma$ne6_at_panix.com>, rryan_at_panix.com (Rob Ryan) writes...
>
>Tell us your secret, please. I find that retrieving large amounts of
>information (a very simple query, no joins, two fields, 30k records)
>is about 6 times slower using Access/ODBC than Powerbuilder v2.0. VB
>(using direct ODBC calls, not Access's engine) was 10-15% faster than
>Access, but still notably slower than Powerbuilder.
>

The important thing to remember is that there are many pieces involved in this sort of configuration. It is entirely possible that all of the performance difference that you are seeing can be explained by the differences between Access, PowerBuilder and VB. Even though your query was very simple, there is no guarantee that it is being handled the same was by the APs you are comparing. In fact, there are probably significant differences.

I am not disputing that there could be a performance difference between ODBC access to a back-end db vs. using the back-end's native client interface. In fact, there must be at least a little overhead with ODBC because most drivers are currently layered on top of existing client interfaces. The only way to know for sure is to compare at the level of the ODBC API and native client API. Comparing at the AP level introduces a whole lot of other variables that can lead to erroneous conclusions.

Scott

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