> We have developed a VFP5 program called the Factory Commander that gathers > data about a manufacturing process and produces reports indicating > production results. > > The calculation phase of this program takes about ten times longer than our > competitors who use C and Smalltalk. We have about 15 related tables and > use SCAN/SEEK and SQL Selects to process the data and I believe we are > maximizing the Rushmore technology. > > Any ideas on why our competitors are beating us using a 'database from > scratch' in C ? This depends on the nature of the calculations. As Vlad pointed out, C is faster at calculations. But I'll defend FoxPro's speed at data access here. If the calculations are data-heavy, then FoxPro is faster. If the calculations are number-crunching heavy, then C is better. You say that your SQL is fully optimized. How about the rest of your code? How long & complicated is your code? A fried of mine was complaining that one routine was 17 pages long for a particular thing, and that it took 1.5 hours to calculate the numbers. I rewrote the routine, cutting it down to about 12 pages and 5 minutes. Feel free to send me a copy of the code. I'd be glad to try and optimize it a bit further. prussell@fox.nstn.ca. /Paul