RE: How does Oracle compared to FoxPro on a PC LAN environment?

In message Fri, 18 Feb 1994 10:15:25 GMT,   kinlee_at_iti.gov.sg (Seah Kin Lee) writes:

> Doing this on behalf of a friend who cannot decide to buy Oracle
> or FoxPro for his place (cost is not the biggest consideration
> althought it will if very significant). The company is using DBASE at
> the moment and is looking at moving to Oracle or FoxPro.
>
> Will be most grateful if anyone could give a critical assessment
> of the pros and cons of Oracle and FoxPro running in a PC Novell
> LAN environment or any comments, past encounters with the two DBMS.
>
> I understand the FoxPro do not have referential integrity maintenance
> capability compared to Oracle. FoxPro newsgroup had a posting that
> developing FoxPro application for a networked environment needs
> special consideration to design and coding.

1. Performance Differences Oracle performs very well on larger databases. Larger in this sense is > 5 million records. FoxPro blows the doors off of Oracle on anything smaller, especially if the indexes are set up properly.
2. Price Differences I don't know the exact price of Oracle under Novell, but I have heard that it is near $6K. FoxPro, on the other hand, can compile an application that everybody can use for $800.
3. Referential Integrity Oracle does have a built in DD with all of the referential integrity that you could want. If you are developing an application for others on your network to use, then you could build your own DD in FoxPro and it could be just as useful. Of course, you will have a bit more work to do yourself, but it's not that hard, and there are a number of packages out there to do this.
4. Post-Development Support (ie. Development Language) Everybody and their dog knows FoxPro (xBase), only big development shops know Oracle. If you may want to upgrade/enhance/continue/change you app in the future, you may have to hire someone who knows the language.

Bottom Line: If this application is not for mission-critical usage, or if it is relatively small, then you should use FoxPro. If you are concerned about speed and you are using a relatively small database (under 5 million records), then you should use FoxPro. If price is a factor at all, then you should use FoxPro. I guess you can see where I am going with this...

/Paul

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