With the standard "it depends" caveats and taking opinions from people you
don't know with a grain of salt...
In many scenarios, it may well be a wash. Unless your user base is becoming
notably large, your tables reaching VFP's limits or you're going to be
needing the replication features of SQL Server--performance is rather likely
to be as much reliant on your network and design of your indexes and client
applications as much as the database engine itself.
SQL Server supports greater query complexity with little care about how many
subqueries you nest or allowing functions to return tables to be used
directly within a query.
VFP's language has a lot more commands and functions you could build into
stored procedures than T-SQL offers.
VFP's IDE is stronger for developing code and graphically managing data.
VFP allows for native access and in many cases can preclude the need for
n-tier systems. I know, I know, it's all the rage, but there a lot of
situations where it's much simpler / cost effective to have a single,
homogeneous environment.
SQL Server has integrated security, practically no limit on data volume and
often (but not always) better performance, though I've heard of tests where
VFP generally wins until you're getting into the million record arena.
IMHO, SQL Server's greatest advantage in a scenario where VFP is a valid
consideration is (sadly) PERCEPTION. VFP has come to be unfairly viewed as
an outdated, complicated version of Access or (perhaps worse) not viewed at
all. I had a technical recruiter yesterday tell me, "Foxborough? Huh, I've
never heard of that." and in a recent interview a project manager say, "But
[VFP is] no where NEAR as powerful as C#, right?"
HTH,
John
Post by DikranHello everyone,
I have a question concerning Visual FoxPro vs Ms-SQL
We are planning to change a Visual FoxPro database to MS-SQL and I would
like to know, what are the advantages and the disadvantages of converting a
database and its tables from Visual FoxPro 8 to MS-SQL ?
The users are accessing the program through a Terminal Server session and
the program's database and tables are also on the same server.
Thank you
Dikran