Outline:
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I have a customer who has reported deteriorating performance over time with the addition of new records to the database. Connection to the Oracle database is via ODBC using SPT.

We have (on-site) a nearly identical set-up which does not suffer these problems and thus pointed to some problem with their network, etc., as the probable cause.

They have replied along the lines of
1. "Changing to an Oracle ODBC driver from an MS driver improved speeds by x2 for Oracle 8 (but no difference for Oracle 7)."

and

2. "Our system engineers and application support people know from experience that Oracle database connections based on ODBC often cause problems. Due to this knowledge and the tests we performed we suspect the ODBC-connection to be the cause of the problem. Is it possible for you to use ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) to connect to the Oracle table? We've never experienced problems with database connections using ADO so we think that would be an improvement."

My Question (and I understand if it's a "how long is a piece of string" type):
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Would moving to ADO increase or decrease system performance (ignoring all other considerations). My gut feeling is that it would decrease the performance: at the moment, recordsets are dropped into VFP cursors and processed (which is fast). Although I would set up timing experiments (for comparison), etc., I am loathe to start experimenting with ADO when we are unable to reproduce their problems here - a quick 'yes', 'no' or 'it depends' to whether any speed benefits would be encountered with ADO would be very helpful. Alternatively, any possible pitfalls of using ADO over SPT.

Regards.