One of my clients is a large residential property managmenent firm. I have been maitaining a custom DOS-based system written in DataFlex for some years. The system is not Y2K compatible and the client wanted a more modern system. They chose one called StarSite from GEAC.

The system uses Visual Basic with Access or SQL-server depending on the size of the files. During testing the SQL-server version appeared to be quite buggy, so they decided to install the DOS based system at their main site temporarily while waiting for the system to mature. They installed the Access-based system at seven satellite locations.

After nine-months they are replacing the Starsite Access system with the original DOS-Btrieve system called Powersite. They have just completed the first downgrade and are quite pleased with the results.

Reasons:

PowerSite is much faster from the users point of view even on old hardware.

More stable.

Starsite was corrupting tables and the vendor blamed Access-NT communication.



I find this quite interesting. As I mentioned in another thread I am very concerned about the execution speed of VFP O-O systems.

Peter Robinson



From the GEAC site:

Geac Property Management Solutions(GPMS), formerly AMSI, is the
leading provider of Windows and DOS property management and
accounting solutions.


StarSeries Hardware Requirements

StarSite (Access Version): Personal computer with a Pentium 166
processor required, recommended Pentium 233 processor Microsoft
Windows 95 (service pack 1) or Microsoft WindowsNT Workstation
operating system Version 4.0 (service pack 3) or later. Will not
run on earlier versions of Windows!
Memory: required 32MB, recommended 64MB
Hard disk space to be published at a later date. If you only use
functions associated with PowerSite/CMS, disk space requirements
should be approximately 30% more than for the DOS products.
One (1) CD-ROM drive
SVGA 256 color video adapter or higher
Microsoft mouse or compatible pointing device
A word processing package is recommended for mail merge purposes.
Recommend Word 95 or later pcAnywhere and modem at the home office
and all sites Access 97 at home office, recommended for all sites


PowerSeries Hardware Requirements

Single-User System Requirements:

PC (with at least 386 processor) running DOS 5.0 or higher
640k RAM (570k free after booting) if installing PSR, DIS, R4S or BCL
512k RAM (460k free after booting) if using products other than PSR,
DIS, R4S or BCL DOS and network client software should be loaded
high(upper memory) when possible 3.5" diskette drive
Printer

Single-User Recommended:

PC with a 486 processor or greater
DOS 6.0 or higher ( Can operate in a Windows environment )
4 mg total RAM or greater
Mouse
Color Monitor