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Posted by Dikkie Dik on 11/01/06 12:48
(reply to a subset of all the originally used newsgroups)
Let me start I have never worked with Foxpro directly. Only had to use
tables in another system (MS-Access).
Off course, the major difference between the databases is that Foxpro is
a filesystem database and MySQL is a server database. That means that in
foxpro, you "have" the tables, the structure, and low-level access to
it. You can use DAO or other libraries to directly access the table
without the overhead of creating and parsing SQL.
This means that filesystem databases are awfully fast, if programmed
correctly (but that is hardly ever done, as filesystem databases are
often used as toys for non-programmers). The drawback is that everybody
can have his own database. It does not enforce or even push data to be
central.
Accessing records individually is a lightweight operation, as you have a
low level access to the tables and indexes.
You don't "have" a database server. You can get a connection and that's
it. Whatever you can do with that connection is determined by the
server. Database servers generally have more security options than
filesystem databases. Database servers are generally centralized: they
run on a dedicated machine with a fixed address and special care is
taken to ensure as much uptime and quality as possible.
Accessing records individually is not exactly a lightweight operation
with server databases: You have to write a "program" in SQL that is
usually longer than the data you expect to return, this program is then
sent over a network, parsed by the server, optimized by the server, and
the results are sent back. So when working with a server, you try to as
much as you can in batches. If you want to access records individually,
stored procedures can take away some of the above.
Programming a database right is very much dependent on the type
(filesystem / server) and even the brand. With every database I know of
you can get good results, but you have to use them wisely.
Best regards
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