From: ibisnestremovespambit@iinet.net.au   
      
   Dominick DiMantova wrote:   
   > OK, thanks. Is it possible that there is a diagram of a typical paradox   
   database   
   > structure, with its tables, stuff like that?   
   >   
   Access has quite a neat tool for getting an entity-relationship diagram   
   of a database. Paradox for Windoz does not have this. It has a fairly   
   crude tool for diagramming the relationships between tables, but you   
   have to select the ones you want and lay them out. That is, you need to   
   understand the ER in the first place, whereas Access can show it to you.   
      
   I have found that the nearest fit to Paradox in architecture is MySQL -   
   same idea of individual files to hold the tables, very similar data   
   types, highly compatible, easy to link with ODBC - and extremely cheap   
   compared to M$ offerings.   
      
   Paradox and Access do not have stored procedures and triggers.   
      
   Paradox's OPAL corresponds to Access's Visual Basic. One is pretty Basic.   
      
   Paradox's OPAL has some very neat ways of examining the database, so you   
   can easily develop tools for getting information about table structure,   
   relationships and meta-data, and documenting it as a data dictionary.   
      
   Paradox's file structure means that you must use directories to easily   
   make sense of the tables and other objects. For example my application   
   has more than 20 directories ("Forms", "Reports", "Scripts", "Queries" -   
   ie program objects - and "ModuleData", "CommonData", "Documentation"...   
   - ie data objects) which apart from making things neat and tidy allows   
   the M$ Windoz system to find the files quickly during operation.   
      
   Paradox scales up easily to about 400 users, unlike the Jet engine,   
   because usually users are not using more than a few files at the same   
   time, so they do not get in each others way. Bill's boys design means   
   that after a few users, the database engine thrashes itself trying to   
   handle lots of accesses (oops, I used that M$ word!) to one physical file.   
      
   BTW - we usually have quite robust and constructive conversations in   
   this NG without personal abuse, even when talking about M$ products.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)