From: dominickdimantova@comcast.net   
      
   Hey, I'm sorry if I offended you or anyone else who had the decency (including   
   you and Michelle) to assist me. I usually defend myself pretty well. Thanks   
   for your assistance.   
      
      
      
   Robert Molyneux  wrote:   
   >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)