Re: Serious Question, lots of debate....

Jim wrote in message ...
>I have a small NT Network with about 15 users. We run a application with
>about 25 tables, two of the tables are very large. One have about 1.2
>million records and the other has about 3.5 million records, the other
>tables are pretty normal. The large tables are used very frequently. Our
>current application is written in Foxpro, and we are re-writting our
program
>with Developer 2.1 running on a Oracle 8.0.5 database.
>
>What database would you use in this senario and why?
>
>What would you write the application in and why?

Jim,

  In part you will get different answers depending on who you ask and what their background is. By far the most important aspect is the performance of the database and the network and how much of those tables are being requested at a time by each user.

  Whether you code the front-end of the application in C,C++, Delphi, VB, Powerbuilder, MS Access or something else the biggest performance aspect is the database. You need to get the database to do what it is good at (working with data) and the application to do what it is best at (user interface stuff).

  On the user-interface side (the application) try to use a product that has a native driver for the database in question if at all possible. ODBC can be quick but it will be slower than a specialised product that writes directly the the API of the database engine.

  My experience is that the application is the least important part of the equation - its how you design your database and how much data you are asking for each time. Generally, if you have decent indexing on your tables then it doesn't matter how big the table actually is because the server will be able to put it into a result set pretty fast. Performance bottlenecks occur when the application requests a large set of data (network performance problem and display problem) or an application requests a large set of data and then does table-scanning on it.

 As for choice of database engine, well, this is an Oracle forum I guess you'll be recommended Oracle! ;)

 I'm sorry this is such a general reply, perhaps when you have made some more decisions you can ask some more targeted questions.

• Ian Sparks.