Re: Mildly OT: dBASE IV

"Frank Hamersley" <terabitemightbe_at_bigpond.com> wrote in message news:LUTeg.357$ap3.193_at_news-server.bigpond.net.au...

> I never found Access "easy" to produce a truly professional outcome (by
> my own standards).

I would probably concur with you on this. I never tried to produce a product for a customer on Access.

What I did with Access was "skunk works". These are products for my own use, that produce results I can either show to a customer, or use myself for decision support.

For example, when gathering data to analyze the performance of an Rdb database, it can be useful to stuff the performance data into a database, in order to massage it. I found it to be useful to stuff in one the desktop, and NOT the VAX where the Rdb database was running, in order to reduce the Heisenberg effect.

Need a one user database, that only the author can use, to massage data easily, and fits on the desktop, and is probably already on the desktop the customer provided you? Access is the ticket.

>
> > For me, even Oracle RDBMS was a step down from DEC Rdb, as a DBMS.
> > However, as a programming environment, Oracle was a step up from Rdb.
> >
> > For the next 15 years or so, I spent helping people with Rdb and/or
Oracle
> > databases get more bang for the buck. Perhaps that's why my experience
is
> > so contrary to what Dawn recounts.
>
> As is most peoples. I don't discount that Dawn hasn't built workable
> solutions using Pick but that doesn't say anything about the RM. I have
> built major gizmos using Excel but that says nothing about the RM either.

Too many negatives in the above for me to parse.

All I'm saying is that while I don't discount Dawn's anecdotal experience, I don't discount my own either. And my own experience does not support Dawn's conclusions.

Regards,

    Dave Received on Tue May 30 2006 - 12:43:29 CEST