>I need to build a medium sized application to process sales, production and shipping.
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>It will support about 30 users, 100 screens to enter/maintain data, 20 major and 40 minor tables, 1000 to 2000 non-inquiry transactions daily.
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>I would like to consider using the Foxpro database instead of a third party database.
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>If you have recent experience in doing something like this, I would like to hear from you about your results including problems you had to overcome in designing and operational reliability after deployment.I see you got good answers already. Yes, VFP can handle that size.
As Hilmar said, watch out for scalability. The absolute limit (the reachable one), is 2GB per file. Thhis happenned to me where I was sold on an idea that a project would have few records, 7 years later, the program is still going strong, but it was more successful than anticipated and they are now rocessing an unexpected 25,000 to 30,000 transactions a day. Therefore the main table is perilously close to 2GB. SO I am now in the process of retrofitting that table and the program to using SQL Server (all other tables stay as DBFs).
I have not had any corruption in 7 years. Rebuilt indices maybe once a year or less. Granted, my app is mostly batch transactions with few users.
Make sure you have UPS everywhere, server, routers, workstations. Use FLUSH. Use Buffering. Inspect the results of TableUpdate and act accordingly. If you are not using a commercial OOP framework, strongly consider using one of the very fine options available. It will improve your RAD and the quality of your program considerably.
Security is a problem with DBFs. Basically they have none. Sure you can investigate the use of DBC Events, but you may have some data (some fields or columns) that have sentsitive information (I certainly do in my company :).
You can fairly painlessly include strong cryptography into your apps using the Windows CryptoAPI. See the examples in _crypt.vcx (in the FFC) or see:
Add security to your data with the Crypto API
http://www.feldstein.net/CodeCryptoArticle.htmThe Ten Immutable Laws of Security
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/columns/security/essays/10imlaws.asp HTH
