
(VFP 3.0 vs 5.0) vs Delphi and Visual Basic
: Moving up from FPW 2.6. Was an excellent environment/product, but
: getting a bit dated. I am working with an application that does not
: require complex db manipulation, but requires a few large files are
: accessed quickly. Looked at VFP 5.0, but it seemed slow on the file
: access. Based on the above, my questions are:
VFP5 has faster file access than VFP3, given sufficient RAM (32+ MB).
However, early releases of VFP5 had a bug that caused very slow
execution of certain multi-table queries; that bug was fixed in
VFP5.0a.
: Is VFP3.0 version faster than 5.0 screen draw speed and file access?
No, it's the other way around; 5.0 is generally faster, though it has
a slightly bigger RAM requirement so if your RAM is marginal 3.0 may
seem faster.
The one reason you might need VFP3 is if you need to support 16 bit
Windows; none of the current versions of any of these products will do
that.
: Was 3.0 a solid version, or should I only consider 5.0? Once again the
: application does not require complex screens,code or file i/o.
5.0 was much more solid than 3.0 in my opinion. Both are fairly solid
at runtime, but 5.0 is a lot less likely to bomb during design time.
: Does anybody have any experience comparing VisFoxPro to VBasic or
: Delphi? Do any of them create an actual .EXE, or are they all
: interpreted i.e. how do their run speeds compare?
Delphi generally produces the fastest executables of the three from my
experience; VFP has the fastest data access (particularly SQL
queries); VB tends to be faster at non-data-intensive applications
than VFP, but not as fast as Delphi.
These generalities may or may not hold true depending on your specific
circumstances. Lots of things affect speed and stability, and choice
of development tool is not usually the most critical issue. In my
experience, it's the overall design that makes or breaks most apps.
: I have looked at Visual Basic, and VFP 5.0, but it is difficult to do
: and indepth analysis without alot of experience! I would appreciate
: some opinions, based on experience. The alternative is me speeding
: most of my time investigating, versus coding.
:
: Bottom line is I am looking for a solid development platform, with
: reasonably fast program/screen execution and quick/solid db access.
: VFP 3.0, 5.0, Delphi or VBasic?
Given that you presumably are developing on and for a Windows
platform, any of these three tools should work. VFP5 is my preferred
choice for most Windows desktop database development, although the
other tools have their strengths as well.
Joe