Alejandro

Like many of these types of topics there will be many good points for and against and I think the final answer will be more about the specific application rather than a DBC vs. free table issue.

In any case let me throw this 2c in: one system we market is currently installed in about 3000 sites on a variety of platforms from W98 to WXP. The system only uses free tables. Users update their systems each day via an FTP download.

What is the single biggest (by far) source of problems? Corrupted cdx files. What is the single biggest cause? Incorrect program shutdown eg just powering off, OS crashes, virus, etc. In other words causes beyond the application itself. I should add that the number of such events is actually (surprisingly) quite low - about 2 or 3 in a week. Fortunately its easy to fix because we just send the user a new self installing CD. (Which brings up another point about how will your users back up their own data? Our app can auto backup data for the user. Just another point to think about).

As I said, my 2c worth.


>I am writing a small gradebook app that will be distributed widely and needs to be almost bomb proof. In this case, could free tables be a better choice than tables in a DBC since I don't need long names or stored procedures? What is the downside?
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>TIA,
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>Alex