I've just recently started using Alpha Five for a order tracking application for my business. I don't forsee it ever being a very large or very heavily used database. Right now there are 5 users, about 20 tables at least half of which are just lookup tables, and we probably add no more than 40-50 records per day. I didn't put much thought into the back end when I started programming this, and I'm not really having any issues, but I'm wondering if this is the right choice of DB for me. SQL seems like overkill, but I don't really know if there are any advantages to using any of the other possible back ends. So my questions are:
1. Is DBF the best choice for me now, and how hard would it be to change now or later on?
2. For backing up my data I have a backup program that saves all of the files from my server onto an Amazon s3 account, both the data directory and the web directory. Is this sufficient backup? Are these files recoverable by just saving the actual files?
3. I develop new forms on my laptop. I have a set of all of the tables on my laptop but they are full of test records. When I write changes up to the server I just send components and web pages, not the DB files. Mostly this works, but I do have a few tables that I had to make some changes to (new fields, changed field names etc.). What I ended up doing was to map a drive to the server, open the table from the server on my own machine in a new DB, and duplicate all of the changes. Is there an easier way to make structural changes to the live tables while preserving their data?
4. Finally, if I wanted to make copies of the tables from my server to my development computer so that I can work with more actual data while I'm programming, is it just a matter of replacing the dbf file locally with the one from the server, or is there more to it than that.
Sorry if these are overly basic questions, but I've only ever programmed Access DBs before.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Chris
1. Is DBF the best choice for me now, and how hard would it be to change now or later on?
2. For backing up my data I have a backup program that saves all of the files from my server onto an Amazon s3 account, both the data directory and the web directory. Is this sufficient backup? Are these files recoverable by just saving the actual files?
3. I develop new forms on my laptop. I have a set of all of the tables on my laptop but they are full of test records. When I write changes up to the server I just send components and web pages, not the DB files. Mostly this works, but I do have a few tables that I had to make some changes to (new fields, changed field names etc.). What I ended up doing was to map a drive to the server, open the table from the server on my own machine in a new DB, and duplicate all of the changes. Is there an easier way to make structural changes to the live tables while preserving their data?
4. Finally, if I wanted to make copies of the tables from my server to my development computer so that I can work with more actual data while I'm programming, is it just a matter of replacing the dbf file locally with the one from the server, or is there more to it than that.
Sorry if these are overly basic questions, but I've only ever programmed Access DBs before.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Chris