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Dumb Newbie Questions!

(hey, at least I'm honest in the title. . .)

I am looking at purchasing Delphi for a project I am starting on, and
would like some feedback as to whether Delphi is the right product for me
or not.  This is an in house development, and working in a visual
environment really doesn't mean much to me.  However, speed of execution
and ease of programming does mean a great deal.  A few other things I
need:  The ability to link records with an unlimited amount of other
records (for example, the record for "John Smith" would need to be
attached to potentially millions of other records.  These other records
would also need links back to the "owner" and could have many owners.  

Is the standard Borland Database Engine capable of this type of relational
attachment?  Is there any limit to the number of attachments I can have?

Is Delphi multi-user capable?  Can I have one big database and have
multiple clients accessing it without fear of coruption (I assume basic
locking functions are available, but I need to make sure!).

Next question:  How fast is Delphi?  Remember, I don't care about
graphics, but I do care about working in NT, OS/2 or 95 (I need the
multi-tasking and 32 bit operations).

I guess the real question, now that you know my basic requirements, is:
Do I really want Delphi?  Would I be better off getting Paradox, or FoxPro
or something similar which is _not_ graphical?  I really would like to get
Delphi (I've been using Borland Pascal for years) but not if its not the
right tool for the job. . .

Thanks in advance for your help!

-Robert
rjohn...@iadfw.net

 

Re:Dumb Newbie Questions!


Delphi IS better Access in some ways.  It is faster.
To know more about Delphi, look at Delphi FAQ at
http://www.mhn.org/delphi.faq

If you don't have Netscape or Mosaic, e-mail to gra...@mhn.org. Maybe
he might be able to help you on obtaining the copy of FAQ.

But, then .. FAQ  probably  is available on this newsgroup already.

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                            /             Sandra Kim (s...@ssds.com)
      ____/    ____/   ___  /    ____/     ASOC DBer
   ____  /  ____  /   /__/ /  ____  /      8150 Leesburg Pike, Suite 1100
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 business driven technology solutions.     (703) 827-0806 FAX (703)
827-0716

Re:Dumb Newbie Questions!


Delphi IS better Access in some ways.  It is faster.
To know more about Delphi, look at Delphi FAQ at
http://www.mhn.org/delphi.faq

If you don't have Netscape or Mosaic, e-mail to gra...@mhn.org. Maybe
he might be able to help you on obtaining the copy of FAQ.

But, then .. FAQ  probably  is available on this newsgroup already.

--
                            /             Sandra Kim (s...@ssds.com)
      ____/    ____/   ___  /    ____/     ASOC DBer
   ____  /  ____  /   /__/ /  ____  /      8150 Leesburg Pike, Suite 1100
 _______/ _______/ _______/ _______/       Vienna,VA 22182-2714
 business driven technology solutions.     (703) 827-0806 FAX (703)
827-0716

Re:Dumb Newbie Questions!


rjohn...@iadfw.net (Robert C. Johnson) wrote:

Quote
>(hey, at least I'm honest in the title. . .)
>I am looking at purchasing Delphi for a project I am starting on, and
>would like some feedback as to whether Delphi is the right product for me
>or not.  This is an in house development, and working in a visual
>environment really doesn't mean much to me.  However, speed of execution
>and ease of programming does mean a great deal.  A few other things I
>need:  The ability to link records with an unlimited amount of other
>records (for example, the record for "John Smith" would need to be
>attached to potentially millions of other records.  These other records
>would also need links back to the "owner" and could have many owners.  
>Is the standard Borland Database Engine capable of this type of relational
>attachment?  Is there any limit to the number of attachments I can have?

Yes, these requirements are within design parameters. There are a couple
considerations, though:

1. A query that would result in the creation of a temporary results table
   would be limited by free disk space for the creation of that results
   table.
2. The Borland Database Engine (BDE) uses indexes for filtering child
   records in a multi-table relationship. This means that accessing those
   records would be faster because the search for them would be in the
   index, not just based on field values in the table.

Quote
>Is Delphi multi-user capable?  Can I have one big database and have
>multiple clients accessing it without fear of coruption (I assume basic
>locking functions are available, but I need to make sure!).

Delphi application are inherently multi-user. You need do nothing special
for an application to be multi-user, however, if you need to take special
actions in the program's context related to multi-user use you may need to
add custom code, depending on what you need done and whether such
functionality is already provided automatically.

Quote
>Next question:  How fast is Delphi?  Remember, I don't care about
>graphics, but I do care about working in NT, OS/2 or 95 (I need the
>multi-tasking and 32 bit operations).

Delphi produces optimized, native code executable files. The speed of these
EXEs is exceptional as concerns those operations that take place in memory
or on-screen.

Operations that are disk-based will be more dependent on hardware
capabilities (and limitations). Database access (which is a subset of
disk-based operations) performance can vary a great deal, depending on
whether native drivers or ODBC drivers are used.

Quote
>I guess the real question, now that you know my basic requirements, is:
>Do I really want Delphi?  Would I be better off getting Paradox, or FoxPro
>or something similar which is _not_ graphical?  I really would like to get
>Delphi (I've been using Borland Pascal for years) but not if its not the
>right tool for the job. . .

Neither Paradox nor FoxPro produce true native code executable files. For
redistribution, both have a run-time that involves an EXE that relies on a
run-time library. Both packages offer an interpreted environment, while
Delphi represents a compiled environment -- much faster in execution.

**************************************************************************
Steve Koterski
Local InterBase Server Technical Support
Borland International, Inc.

Re:Dumb Newbie Questions!


In article <rjohnson-2209950942020...@dal04-14.ppp.iadfw.net>, rjohn...@iadfw.net (Robert C. Johnson) says:

Quote
>I am looking at purchasing Delphi for a project I am starting on, and
>would like some feedback as to whether Delphi is the right product for me
>or not.  This is an in house development, and working in a visual
>environment really doesn't mean much to me.

It will when you see how easy it makes development...

Quote
>However, speed of execution
>and ease of programming does mean a great deal.  

Delphi has this in spades...

Quote
>A few other things I
>need:  The ability to link records with an unlimited amount of other
>records (for example, the record for "John Smith" would need to be
>attached to potentially millions of other records.  These other records
>would also need links back to the "owner" and could have many owners.  

>Is the standard Borland Database Engine capable of this type of relational
>attachment?  Is there any limit to the number of attachments I can have?

YES and NO.  Yes, it is definitely capable of these kinds of relational
links, and NO, there are no limits to the number of attachments you
can have.  Limited only by system resources, as far as I know.

Quote
>Is Delphi multi-user capable?  Can I have one big database and have
>multiple clients accessing it without fear of coruption (I assume basic
>locking functions are available, but I need to make sure!).

Absolutely.  The database engine that comes with Delphi is the Paradox
database, and I have written multi-user apps with it for years now.  I
depend on it.  Corruption CAN happen if the user turns off the PC in the
middle of an operation (usually a writing operation), but this is rare.
Even if it happens, table rebuilds are ridiculously easy.  If the thought
of this scares you, though, you should be using a client-server
architecture to protect against that sort of thing, using a back-end
database server.  Fortunately, Delphi does this very well, too.  I'm
developing client software right now based on an Informix back end.
See my resume (listed in my signature at the end of this message) to
see examples of the kinds of applications I've done using Borland's
Paradox database engine.

Quote
>Next question:  How fast is Delphi?  Remember, I don't care about
>graphics, but I do care about working in NT, OS/2 or 95 (I need the
>multi-tasking and 32 bit operations).

Well, Delphi is fast (it compiles to an .EXE file, even), but I don't
see how that's related to NT, OS/2, or 95.  Delphi will be 32-bit
in a few months.  The Windows 95 version is almost here, and all your
applications developed with the current 16-bit version are expected to
be able to compile fine into the 32-bit environment (assuming you don't
call Windows API functions that will not be supported by 32-bit Windows).
No OS/2 version, though.

Quote
>I guess the real question, now that you know my basic requirements, is:
>Do I really want Delphi?  Would I be better off getting Paradox, or FoxPro
>or something similar which is _not_ graphical?  

1. Paradox IS graphical, as much as any Windows app is, unless you're
talking about Pdox for DOS.

2. What difference does it make whether it's graphical or not?

Quote
>I really would like to get
>Delphi (I've been using Borland Pascal for years) but not if its not the
>right tool for the job. . .

You should try to get someone to show it to you.  That will tell you more
than anything else.  You can also visit Borland's web site
(http://www.borland.com/)

----------------------------------------------------------
Kendall Jackman
Paradox and Delphi Development
See my resume at: http://www.xmission.com/~igeme/kjresume/
----------------------------------------------------------

Re:Dumb Newbie Questions!


Quote
Kendall Jackman (ig...@xmission.com) wrote:

: depend on it.  Corruption CAN happen if the user turns off the PC in the
: middle of an operation (usually a writing operation), but this is rare.
: Even if it happens, table rebuilds are ridiculously easy.  If the thought

It is?  Please tell me how.  Don't get me wrong I beleive you.  I have just
found that with Delphi everything is easy when you know how.  It just finding
out how to do it to begin with.  Then it is a piece of cake.
--
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Office: 603.672.0736            Fax: 603-672-4846
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