Hello Daniel:

Just wanted to thank you for getting me started on an entirely
different design path. My experience was with DOS/PASCAL/BTRIEVE FOR
DOS then Windows/Delphi/Paradox. In the DOS days I had many happy
users with applicatios that were fast and reliable. When I went to
Windows/Delphi/Paradox the applications were still reasonably fast
but not so reliable. This being the case I started looking for a
more reliable alternative. About a year ago I started looking at
Interbase/IBO because I heard Interbase was very reliable. I rewrote
a few applications and although they ran ok they were very very slow
in compared to Paradox. I started posting messages about how slow
IBO/Interbase was and got a number of responses hinting that I needed
to think totally different about database access and design and get
out of the Paradox mindset. This was great except that was the only
mindset I knew and had no idea what these suggestions meant. In my
mind there was only one was to design/access a database and I was
already doing it. I posted more messages but all I ever got was
cryptic answers, answers that were probably valid for those why
understood Interbase/IBO, not so valid for newcomers. After a few
frustating months I gave up Interbase/IBO thinking "why should I have
to fight with something like this to get the speed I already had".
In any case I started looking around for an alternative but found
nothing I liked. About a month ago I revisited Interbase/IBO and
found the same problem. One of my applications loads 350 existing
records fron another table and creates 150 support records for each
record (a total of 52,500 records). It took about 15 seconds to run
in Paradox, it took about 4 minutes in Interbase/IBO. So again I
posted some messages about the speed of Interbase/IBO. Again I got
responses that meant nothing to me until you responded. Based on
what you wrote I started thinking about stored procedures, triggers,
etc. Stuff that I had dismissed before as "what do I need these
for". I rewrote the application using "server based thinking". It
now loads the records in less than 5 seconds. Three times as fast
the it's Paradox counterpart. Ahthough I am still VERY week in SQL
I, for the first time am beginning to understand what "server based
thinking" means and many of those cryptic messages I received in the
past are beginning to make sense. Just wanted to say thanks and tell
you how much I appriciate your help.