Re: HELP me choose a database server!

>>I have little to no experience in the area of client/server database systems
>>and I need some advice on what sort of system I should chose as a back end.
>>From what I have heard (and my own experience), Access will be fine for the
>>user interface. What sort of server database software should I be looking at?
>>What sort of operating environments is it available under? How does
>>an NT solution stack up against an OS/2 solution?
 

>There are many more OS/2 DBMS Servers installed than NT servers.
>Also the OS/2 SMP product runs circles around the NT SMP product.
>So if you look at an Intel based solution I would suggest OS/2.
>DB2 for OS/2 support MS Access clients via ODBC. If performance is important
>then I would also look at static SQL implementations, one thing MS Access
>and some of the other GUI front-ends don't support at all. In combination with
>DB2/2, products like VisualAge and VisualGen (both on OS/2) could be an alternative.

I have been looking at Visual Age but the documentation that IBM sent out to me wasn't the best - and they couldn't supply any demonstration applications either. I guess I will have to contact them further (in person). (Unless, of course, you have some sample run-time or compiled applications you want to send me. ;-)

>There is also a UNIX (AIX) version of DB2: DB2/6000.
>
>Other R-DBMS on OS/2 are: Sybase System10, Oracle, SQLBase, XDB,
>Ingres, Informix, RBase, etc.
>
>Finally, you seem to have chosen for DOS/Windows clients.
>Although these might work in your case, it's based on a product (DOS) that's near to be replaced
>by real 32-bit multitasking Operating Systems like OS/2.

That's correct, and I'm aware of the advantages of OS/2 (I am an ex OS/2 user myself), though there are some problems. Probably the most important reason for sticking with Windows is the sake of simplicity. Most of the users only use Windows for Word Processing or Excel. If we chose the OS/2 platform we are seriously limited in the types of applications we can run. The performance of Word for Windows 6.0 under Warp is NOT ideal (well, worse than 3.11 anyway), and the OS/2 solutions (AmiPro, et al) are quite large applications which don't run well in 8megs of RAM.

Visual Age looks quite attractive, I will admit, but there are other factors in this equation. We do make use of OS/2's stability (I wish Warp was as stable as 2.11!) to supervise the industrial control PLCs around the factory but are steering away from it for the average user.

Thanks for your time.

Cheers,

David Connors                                  dave_at_splat.paxnet.com.au