>I had a question from one of our analysts asking how good VFP's restoration after a corrupt table was.
>
>This was a comparison to Oracle, in which I responded that VFP's tables would have to be restored via NT's tape drive and didn't have any means of restoring corrupt/damaged files itself, although there are products out there can restore corrupt tables - but I'm not sure how good these are as opposed to Oracles own recovery devices.
>
>Is that incorrect, or is that the bottom line to such a question?
>
>Thanks
>Kev

Of course a server engine offers significant improvements over simple dbf formats in terms of robustness. The real difference is not in restoring corrupt tables. Because all db formats, whether SQL engines or simpler ISAM, can get corrupted when an OS is getting mad...

The issue is fundamentally about offering online backup (yes you can backup whilst your db is beeing updated), logging ALL updates to ALL tables and managing transactions. An SQL db engine will automatically log (ie trace all updates to your data) in a recoverable format possibly on a different disk or machine.

We use Sybase Anywhere (much cheaper than SQL server and Oracle but a fully implemented SQL92 db engine). We still use VFP but as a c-s tool. Best of both worlds in our opinion :)

As a concept the sql engine is one of the best things ever invented on the IT planet with basic, Lotus (the spreadsheet), HTML, dbaseiii and some others...

Alas it is a costly item mostly. There is little competition in this field because selling db engines is very costly - ie it costs a fortune to convince an IT dept to buy or switch db engine.

In the end only oracles currently knows how make money with db engines(:

You can expect significant changes in the business model in this area soon, possibly with Interbase, MySQL and Postgres powering web apps.