At 05:20 PM 3/28/2000 -0700, you wrote:

>From: "Jason Wharton" <jwharton@...>
>
>Tim,
>
> >Most people will want to use access as a front end and
> >interbase as the back end.
>
>Pardon me but what *people* are you talking about?
>
> >Although Delphi is a very productive environment
> >it's no match for access.
>
>You had better qualify that before you get pounded into the dirt.
>
>How is Delphi no match for Access?
>
>Quite frankly I would change professions if you tried to force me to use a
>tool like Access.
>
> >What you give up in stability and speed you make
> >up for in ease of use and RAD.
>
>Stability moreso and speed in my book are non-negotiables. Why should we in
>this industry ever act like stability is something to put in a balance. The
>thought of this totally makes me nautious. Performance, ok, we can tinker
>with that one a little if the usability gains are tremendous, but never
>should someone put stability in the balance. Unheard of in my sector...
>
>Pardon the rant...

I must agree with Jason on this one. After using tools like Paradox, VB,
Access and Delphi for years I must say I will never, ever touch Access
again (and raise hell when forced to use VB). If they want my Delphi
they'll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands... :-)

Stability and speed aside completely, how is Access easier and more Rapid
than Delphi? Ahh... must be talking about those wizards. Mostly inspires a
false sense of security if you ask me.

I think the reason I despise Access so much is the same reason I hate other
Microsoft products - there comes a point at which I am spending more time
_working around_ the tool than _using_ it. My boss spent six hours last
week deleting chunks of the Win95 Registry just so she could *reinstall*
visual studio so she could complete a project she had due in a couple of days.

And honestly, this is how tools like Linux and Interbase came to be
popular. They work. Extremely well.

And so I'm not a total (f)lamer:

It would be really nice to see Interbase take Microsoft's goals like ease
of use and automatic configuration and do it better than Microsoft, with a
footprint two orders of magnitude smaller. There'll be a lot of cheers in
the crowd the day that happens.

A buddy of mine claims to have gained a 40% increase in speed by moving
from MSSQL 6.5 to Interbase 5.5, maybe I should do a write up on his
project for PR fodder.

I really think Interbase would be more popular if there were some way to
tune it to have better OLAP performance. Interbase already scales way
beyond MSSQL, but if one could get "similar" performance on the same box
that SQL server runs on then the price difference would really become
overwhelming.

I have no idea if this is possible, I don't understand the Interbase
architecture well enough to even speculate.

Tom White