Database program recommendations?

[Tempest]

Hi guys,

I am currently looking at options or possibilities of programs that help build a database type program... To be honest I know little to nothing at all about the subject but have been told that Alpha 5 will do what I am looking for, but the recommender is no expert either... So way hoping what I need makes sense and someone may have some ideas...

At the moment I use Excel, with some basic Macros and it does "pretty much" what I need but I was hoping to build something a bit more powerful/functional and easier for end users, not to mention a bit more "substantial" then a Excel workbook... At the moment it is a matter of manually pasting data into a worksheet and letting the formulas compare things/lookup values, sort, etc, then in some situations copying this cleaned up data into a new workbook and so on. So if there was something that can easily do all of the Excel type functions would be an ideal place to start looking.

I probably wont have time or dedication to learn a whole programming language which is why I will need something like Alpha to make the whole thing easier and quicker to learn and build...

I don't mind paying for a licence (and in the end if I wanted to use it for work, would have to have legit copy) but if there was either a free option or a cracked copy so I don't go and blow hundreds of dollars if I end up not liking it or decide I am far to slack to go through with it...

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

 

[SiegeTank]

The best DBF programming language EVER has always been Foxpro. Visual Foxpro 9.0 is the current version from Microsoft, altho they've announced they won't support it after 2015 or so. But millions of people use Foxpro, in all its versions back to the excellent V2.6 in both DOS and Windows formats. The 2.6 versions go back to the 1990s when Microsoft bought the program from Fox Software, expressedly (some suspect) to kill it in order to promote their horrible Access. Well, rumors of Foxpro's death were highly exaggerated as demand for Foxpro forced Microsoft to support it for years.

Foxpro is a superb program because it's easily accessible to amateurs. I have taught non-professionals how to use Foxpro in AN HOUR---sufficiently to set up a few databases, generate a screen and produce some reports. Try to accomplish that with a modern OOP language. If I was inclined to view conspiracies everywhere I'd suspect that Foxpro was gradually shit-canned over the years in order to guarantee professional programmers plenty of work!

Visual Foxpro 9.0 can be bought in academic version for around $80. It can generate an .exe which can be run by anyone even without a copy of the program itself. Frankly, getting a copy of 2.6 would make life easier since it's much more accessible and far easier to learn than the bloated 9.0. (Microsoft bloats everything it touches, but we all know that.) 9.0 is supposedly backwards-compatible with 2.6 but it wants to be an OOP language so it the compatibility is dicey.

Legit licenses for versions of 2.6 sell for more now than they did originally. For software originally released in the 1990s, this is proof positive of the quality and power of this software. Unless you luck out a copy of 2.6 DOS or Windows is going to run you $250. And if you want to create self-standing executibles you'll need to get the distribution kit, which can cost as much itself, IF you're lucky enough to find one for sale. This is why you'll probably end up having to buy 9.0. A good thing about 9.0 is it's the only Foxpro version that can run natively in all versions of Windows, including 64-bit. It's projected to run fine in Windows 8. Plus it comes with what you need to generate .exe's which can run without the program.

Foxpro is from the old xBase family of languages. There are open-source versions out there. Check out Clipper, Flagship, Harbour; read the wikipedia articles for more references.

There's nothing like these xbase database languages for easy manipulation of large amounts of data. If there's anything comparable on the market today I've never heard about it. Enlighten me. But please don't tell me about SQL for handling databases and using C+, C#, Perl, etc for the related coding. If you've spent even an hour with Foxpro you'd know how superior its database handling was/is than anything involving SQL can ever hope to be.

 

[dewey2461]

I think the answer may be to sit down with Visual Basic for Applications.

1. Its built into excel so you can automate things like opening files, copy+paste, etc.

2. Its easy to learn.

3. There are a TON of on line code samples.

 

[Zeta1]

If you've spent even an hour with Foxpro you'd know how superior its database handling was/is than anything involving SQL can ever hope to be.

That quote made me cringe a little...

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vfoxpro/bb190289.aspx

Q: How does Visual FoxPro 9.0 compare to SQL Server?

We do not contrast Visual FoxPro versus SQL Server. We position SQL Server as a database engine and Visual FoxPro as a developer tool. While Visual FoxPro has a database engine built-in, it is not positioned as a stand-alone database engine only. The trend is for an increasing amount of Visual FoxPro based applications to use SQL Server as the data storage in the solution. Of course this is not required, it depends on the requirements of the solution. SQL Server offers security, reliability, replication, and many other features of a full relational database engine while the Visual FoxPro database system is an open file based DBF system that does not have many of those features. We leave it up to developers and companies to position and to compare various Microsoft products and technologies with each other and decide which ones are best for them to use when and how.

 

[devestator]

Eh, VBA is really only useful for doing some advanced things in the proper areas. Like doing advanced tasks on spreadsheets in excel. If you have data that is proper for excel (numeric data sets that need to be manipulated, graphed or things like that). If however you have need of a true database then excel is a poor substitution for it no matter what VBA you throw at it.


It really all depends on exactly what you are doing with it. You don't give much detail on what you are using it for / storing in it so it's hard to give a complete answer.

If you are just manipulating numeric data sets, excel should be fine.

If you have a small scale data set consisting of more than numbers (ie names, dates, strings, etc), and need searching / filtering capabilites, a small Access database with VBA forms for a front end should suffice.

I've personally never used FoxPro, but from what I've seen and heard about it the programming aspect of it is very similar to BASIC. A friend that I inquired about it, ranked it's database handling above access, but it's programming aspects inferior to VBA. With that in mind I'd say it's probably most useful for larger data sets that don't need as much front end coding done. Again though, I don't have any experience in FoxPro to know for sure if that is accurate.

If it's a larger set of data and / or you want a lot of people to be able to use it simultaneously, and have the greatest versatility you'd want to start looking into something like mySQL with a full front end. The front end would then depend on your target usability. You could go with a typical windows program in any of the .NET languages (VB being the easiest to pick up and most rapid for development purposes), or you could choose a web based front end for more wide spread distribution and support on any OS that can access the web. Keep in mind that a web based deployment does not necessarily need to be accessible on the public web, it's entirely possible to create a website on your local intranet only accessible to your company connected directly to your network.

 

[Tempest]

It really all depends on exactly what you are doing with it. You don't give much detail on what you are using it for / storing in it so it's hard to give a complete answer.

Hi all and thanks so far for all the replies!

You are right of course I haven't given much detail, I think I still may not know the right questions to ask of info to provide as I am still doing a bit of reading into it and I don't know yet, what I don't know

Essentially I need something that will allow me to store and handle vast amounts of Data. At the moment some of my spreadsheets take literately 4-6 hours to run on my shitty work laptop, and even a few hours on a 12GB RAM i7 975... It is around 500,000 rows and about 50 columns or data with some seriously intense formulas.

The data is manipulated with a series of formulas to sort and filter etc, then it is searched for matching information and compared to a table for various things. It is a little hard to explain to someone that isn't familiar with the actual data etc. I am not a programmer my self, but an "end user" my self that sees the need for tools to do my job more effectively and efficiently.

Other sheets I am working on are much smaller but are still a little bit limited by excel. I suppose I am wanting to get something a bit more heavy duty then I may necessarily need just so I don't hit a limit again down the track like I have with excel and have wasted hours learning it, so I was kind of shying away from stuff like ACCESS or BASIC because from what I have read it is really only the next step up from Excel. So it is a bit of a hobby project I guess.

What I will need is the ability to create an EXE so that any number of end users can install it on their computer, so as I understand it I will need "unlimited runtime"?

 

[Carbja23]

Use Access, its really easy and will handle 500,000 rows pretty ez. if you go to like 1 billion rows then look for something a little more robust.

Excel with a data link to access of the specific filtering and some VBA code and it will run very fast.

 

[SiegeTank]

Foxpro was famous in its time for its speed and even in the olden days the database limit was in excess of 1 billion records. Back when 256k was a LOT of RAM for a computer!

I've never used Foxpro for web applications. I know it's supposed to be CAPABLE of that but I'm just not experienced in that side of it. For manipulation of databases on a client it's always been designed to, as you put it, " to store and handle vast amounts of Data".

With all due respect to the programmers on this site, and I know there are many with vast and varied skill sets, don't knock Foxpro until you've tried it. For the specific purpose which I think the OP is trying to achieve, nothing else I've ever found compares, especially if simplicity and quick, easy development is a major goal. I don't believe anyone would ever claim that building a database solution using SQL along with any of the "popular" modern programming languages is an easy task for an amateur.

In all seriousness I've tried to move away from Foxpro, especially where 64-bit systems won't run any version below 9.0 without using a virtual OS or emulator. I have yet to find ANYTHING comparable. I'm open to suggestions. My own particular needs do not involve web development, these are business applications resident on PCs of various power: order processing, inventory, etc. A very important part of the implementation is to allow users to be able to sort and index databases and then create their own reports on as as-needed basis. Foxpro is super for that, better than anything I've ever seen, and I've tried to provide with Access, Excel, etc. and not even close.

 

[dewey2461]

I do a lot stuff with excel and its possible that what your doing can be speed up 100x by doing some simple tweaking like truing off auto calculations and screen updating.

On the other hand I rarely have anything over 5-50k rows.

Given that you describe yourself as an end user who's not a programmer, take some time and ask folks you work with/know if they can look at the excel. Failing that see if they know someone who's done databases. Getting advice here is good but doing support via forums kind of sucks when your starting out.

 

[devestator]

What I will need is the ability to create an EXE so that any number of end users can install it on their computer, so as I understand it I will need "unlimited runtime"?

Does this exe simply need to be a standalone exe that users run to access a database type app and store their own data, or does it need to be something that accesses a central set of data that all users access?

That will make a large difference on how you set it up, and while access can do shared databases, it sucks at it I'm not sure about FoxPro since as I said before I haven't used it, but from reading about it and people saying that a lot of people are using SQL server as a back end with FoxPro, I imagine it is capable of multi user databases.

If this is a hobby project that you are going to be learning on the side and FoxPro is as easy as SiegeTank claims then go with that. 500k rows is actually a very small amount of data and pretty much any database program can handle that. It's more than I'd want to have in Excel though, that is for sure Speeds will be effected by proper index creation. Although if you truely have 50 columns you may need to rethink your design. I rarely see a database table with more than 20 or 30 columns and even then those are usually some of the more poorly designed ones. There may be some situations where you actually need that many columns, but it'd be a pretty rare and unique situation.

As SiegeTank points out, you aren't going to be able to pick up a full fledged programming language and connect it to a database backend very quickly. If you have no programming skill at all I'd say you probably need a minimum 3 months or so to have something in a working state, if you are talented at that sort of stuff. If you aren't talented at it, 8 to 12 months if ever.

A full time programmer could probably knock it out in a couple of weeks, depending on exactly what you needed and how pretty you wanted it