>Hi Terence - thank you for your reponse. Its most appreciated. In other words you are saying that there is not much benefit to free tables?
Hi,
I think Terence was more talking about the benefits on having the DBC, and less (nor not) about possible benefits of free tables.
Now with Terence message in mind, free tables are not really "beneficial", but you can take the next into account :
- Yes you can do without the DBC at all. IOW, with free tables only you can do all you want, but certain things have to be done yourself (see Terence's message).
- You could say that working with free tables only is some faster, because the DBC isn't accessed (for each table). This wouldn't be a reason I'd say.
- If you decide for the DBC, just don't use the Designer because you end up with too many indexes and an improper normalized database. That is, if you want to achieve a 100 % logical model in the physical database.
- I think the DBC is limited to some amount of tables it can contain, though I'm not sure. What I do know however, that if you have a few hundred tables, you can't use the designer again; it just can't cope with that amount (already for visual aspect reasons).
- IMHO you must really have a reason to use the DBC, and for that you can think of SET DATABASE TO xxx and what that would do for you. IOW, you could have more DBC's with some logic to your app. Think of DataSessions too, and that the DBC might disturb here in the logic area.
- Personally (!) I find these kind of generic things always more disturbing than helpful, knowing that you can make your own "DBC" just as well.
In the end there will be many (more) reasons to use the DBC or just not. Others may come up with something really useful ...
HTH,
Peter
>
>>>Hi all:
>>>
>>>First, wish you all a Happy New Year and thank you all for the support I have received in the last year.
>>>
>>>Question: In developing an application, could I use Free Tables totally or should I always use a Database? Does it really matter?
>>>
>>>Thank you for your help.
>>>
>>>- Ravi
>>
>>
>>
>>You should study the benefit of using Database.
>>Then, you will find that your application need those benefit or not.
>>But there are some situation:
>>across database data,
>>duplicate database name as different company name with similar data structure.
>>You need to study well what to do..
>>
>>Renaming Database may cause losing most local view, remote view...
>>
>>Datasbase benefit:
>>- allow more rules on table:
>>grid header displayname,
>>check data input
>>trigger handle
>>default value
>>default classlib control
>>- allow table relationship setting
>>it make table auto relate on Form DE once the table is added
>>- create SQL views
>>view can be reused many times on report.
>>view allow create calculated var, such as rowtotal, do report with ease.
>>
>>
>>If you create an application for single directory use,
>>database help you do a lot of things.
>>
>>but if you need across other VFP projects and application.
>>You need to concern the database name to prevent duplicate.
>>
>>p.s. above list is my general idea on database,
>>maybe there are more benefit not listed.
