A5v4 vs. Access97

[JoAnn Shepherd]

I'm thinking about buying A5v4, and using it instead of Access 97. Are you happy with A5? How does it really compare to Access? I saw somewhere that a newer version is forthcoming. Should I wait? Thanks for your opinions.

[forskare]

RE: A5v4 vs. Access97

JoAnn,

Oh Boy, What a soapbox!

I use Access 97 at work and can tell you how limited it is. It's nicest part is the query processes, easier than A5 but others will differ with me. However,the A5 queries, on the other hand, are much more flexible. And the more you use them, the easier it becomes.

Access 97 is limited to 1GB of storage and 2BG for Access 2000. Access does have more property offerings and a few extras on the menu.

Overall, I like A5 better and a new version will be out in the late summer or early fall. Most of us are already salivating.

Best feature of A5? Hands down; this message board! No one else comes close to it. I must admit, there were times when I was tempted to stay with Access but gave up the idea rather quickly when the thought of losing the message board came to mind.

Try a search on this message borad for Access. You'll find lots and lots of comments about how well liked Access really is.

kenn

[CALocklin]

RE: A5v4 vs. Access97

I think Ken pretty well hit the nail on the head - run a search on this board for Access. There have been many comments about this in the past. And, just in case you don't find enough, I will send you a zip file with some copies of earlier postings that I saved as HTML docs.

[Howard Berg]

RE: A5v4 vs. Access97

I spent quite a lot of time with Access97. It does have its good features and I wish not to take anything away from it. However I've found A5 much more powerful for someone like me with a small businessto program and use effectively. And to get up and running full tilt. That's important. Plus what one doesn't get or understand right away can be easily answered on this super board. Howard Berg

[French]

RE: A5v4 vs. Access97

As long as the Wizards in Access hold out, you're ok. After that you'd better be ready for some heavy lifting with reference materials and/or classes.

No database I've seen is truly easy or intuitive, but if you take the time to find your way around, you can do more as an "amateur" with A5 than with Access. You can achieve an amazing amount without having to touch XBasic.

If you have to justify your choice of software to others, you may have something of an uphill battle. It is not the industry standard. If they care about functionality and the ability to get something up and running in a minimal amount of time, they should like A5.

[rtbtat]

RE: A5v4 vs. Access97

JoAnn:

Access 2000 is an outstanding product that is in some ways superior to Alpha Five. However, Alpha Five has a couple of key areas, such as the all-important Field Rules feature, and Form Design, where it is superior to Access.

Both products are very competent and will do the job so you will have everything you need with either one. The big difference is ease of use. Alpha Five is significantly easier to set up and use. In addition, if you get into programming, Alpha's XBasic is far easier to learn and more logical than Visual Basic, which I think is unneccessarily complex and far from intuitive.

Almost everyone I know, who has worked with both applications, will tell you that development time in Alpha Five is significantly faster than Access. In my personal experience, it takes me anywhere from 50% to 90% longer in development time using Access because it just doesn't have Alpha's ease of use and logical functionality.

I will tell you that both products are very similar, in fact, A5 appears to be based upon and patterned after Access. If you learn Alpha Five, you are in many ways learning how to use Access.

Should you wait until version 5 comes out? Obviously that depends upon your personal sitatuation. One thing I would check on is the free upgrade umbrella. I am not sure, but I think Alpha used to give customers a free upgrade to the new version if it shipped within 90 days of your purchase. It certainly wouldn't hurt to see if the company still has such a policy.

[forskare]

RE: A5v4 vs. Access97

I agree with Robert that no database is as easy as its claimed to be. And, we must temper our claims about which one is easier because of variables such as a persons ability and the application design itself. I built a fairly complex database in Access w/o VB other than a few math expressions. I can develop some applications in Access faster than in A5 because I could format several fields at the same time and Access has two styles of a Browse to choose from which A5 can't produce even with single field formating. If you know Access, the prinicples are the same but you have to unlearn Access (a bit) and learn A5, at least I did.

A5's lookups and fill'ins are better than Access which allows only one field to be filled in. (A97)

All in all, I am much more satisfied with A5. Selwyn and his crew work hard at providing a fix to bugs when they are discovered, providing you with a temporary work around if necessary. Access will never be able to provide that personal touch!!

ken

[Selwyn Rabins]

RE: A5v4 vs. Access97

Thanks very much to all who endoresed Alpha Five here.

I can tell you that we at Alpha Software are highly committed to improving Alpha Five in the areas where people think Access has an edge, and improving the distance between us and Access in the areas were I think we have an edge.

Thanks.

[Elliott Lester]

RE: A5v4 vs. Access97

JoAnn,

Unfortunately our company made the decision to go with A5--which as most of the board knows until recently we felt was quite powerful. The bottom line is that on complex large databases A5v4 has major heap lock and associated problems that will cause a company to waste hundreds of hours and more dollars.

I would take a look at Access 2000 or Visual Foxpro.

While Microsoft does not have a board like this--and I think highly of it and the many who try and do help out--Like Stan, Bill, Ohlen and others, Microsoft has a very
well designed and easily searchable "knowledge base" that
contains hundreds if not thousands of white papers and articles specific to database design and implimentation.

In fact, if you are planning a company database, you should look to SQL server, especially if you want to be interactive on the web. SQL server can better handle large amounts of data. Access databases tend to bog down when the files are getting over 50 to 100 mb, whereas SQL server databases can easily handle that much data or more.
SQL server can handle requests much quicker and more efficiently. SQL server databases can also be backed up without having to take down the server which means you'll get better uptime. You can also administer SQL server remotely through their Enterprise manger.

Further, while we have an interactive database on the net using A5 and Cold Fusion 4.5; the massive problem that we have with heap lock failures, VXD errors and the like mean that most of the time we are rebooting our systems.

I remember when faxing came out in the 80's--before PC faxing. Our company hired a full time fax processor to stand by the fax machine and push paper and sort them.
Now we have a full time rebooter and index rebuilder who is paid to stand by and reboot all of the machines in the office while our staff plays cards on their computer twice a day.

We find that the new A5v5 is quite powerful and if the programmers at Alpha software can get everything to work, you might want to wait, or buy the A5v4 just to learn on but not put a database into production.

Now, we are not the typical database user--having to push our database to the extremes both in design and functionality. So, our problems may never happen to you. And I might add I do not think that A5 markets to our kind of user.

If speed of design is the most important factor, hands down it is A5. If a interactive help board is important to you--this one is the best with programmers that take time from their busy day to work out problems and provide real answers and solutions.

Good luck

[JoAnn Shepherd]

RE: A5v4 vs. Access97

Thank you all so much for your insight. What I'm looking for is ease of use to develop front end apps for SQL Server. We have MS SQL 6.5, probably won't upgrade it for at least a year. Database sizes will be normally under 100 mb. Primarily, our users have a lot of spreadsheets with redundant data that would be better served in a database. Customer support is real important to me. I have used Alpha Four in the past, and have been using A97 for a couple years, but am not real fond of it.

Thanks again! I'll probably go ahead and get one copy to see what we think of it. At least I can have fun playing with it!

[Geoffrey Hollander]

RE: A5v4 vs. Access97

JoAnn,

I am fairly familiar with most of the databases that you have mentioned, and have a few thoughts to throw in with all these other fine responses.

Access 2000 is far and away a better product than Access 97. If anyone is going to work seriously with Access, this is the way to go -- it's a truly significant upgrade to 97.

For custom development of small to medium-sized applications (and in many cases large ones as well), I personally prefer Alpha Five for the qualities mentioned by many others here. It's superior speed, lack of bloat, ability to perform complicated data processing operations on expression variables, its field rules, etc. make it, in my opinion, the best overall desktop database around.

However, if you are moving towards SQL Server, Access 2000 is the only choice that makes sense; for the following reasons. First, Access 2000 is designed specifically to work as a front end with SQL Server. As of version 7 (version 2000 will be out in June/July), Alpha Five cannot connect or even consistently display data in a file created by SQL Server 7 and above. This appears to mainly be because of the radical shift in data (field) types that it (and Access) adopted to allow for international data.

Because Access 2000 and SQL Server both use the same data types and perform most of their query functions with SQL, they are a natural together.

If you start a small database in Access (using its default Jet dtabase engine) and then later want to scale up to SQL Server, Access has a built in utility that can migrate your Access database into SQL Server. You will probably lose some queries, forms, reports etc., but the conversion process is stable and still saves a lot of time.

If you know that SQL Server is in your future and still want to begin building your database and start developing saved queries, foms, reports and so on, Microsoft includes the MSDE (Microsoft Database Engine). This is a scaled down version of the SQL Server database engine (the main difference is that it handles fewer users). By chosing the MSDE option when first creating your database, all your forms, reports and queries will remain functional when you scale up to SQL Server.

Some other thoughts. Visual Basic is much less intuitive and not as flexible or powerfull as Xbasic; but it is universal, cross application, recognized and used by SQL Server and used by millions of programmers. Universality is also an important issue in what you apparently are trying to accomplish.

I got a good look at SQL Server 2000, for a review, about a month ago. I think that going to this version when it comes out makes a lot of sense. It's really impressive.

Before the good people on this board march on my castle with pitch forks and torches, again, Alpha Five is my first choice (and recommendation) when developing an application for a client, or working with their data. But from what you have said, and with SQL Server on your horizon, I'd give serious thought to Access 2000.

Regards,

Geoff Hollander

[JoAnn Shepherd]

RE: A5v4 vs. Access97

Thanks Geoff. I think I will take a look at Access 2k also. I've used the migration tool also (currently running MS SQL 6.5) and it worked very nicely.

For the office, especially since we may be running MS SQL 7 in the near future, and ODBC connectivity seems to be an issue with A5, I may not be able to consider A5, except for desktop use. However, we do not want to support two desktop db's as we now use A97. But for me personally I may just buy a copy to mess with. Thanks again!

[O.J. Newman]

RE: A5v4 vs. Access97

Hi Geoff!

Elliott Lester wrote:
>> I would take a look at Access 2000 or Visual Foxpro. > I am fairly familiar with most of the databases that you have mentioned, > if you are moving towards SQL Server, Access 2000 is the only choice that makes sense;

[Jim Rowlen]

RE: A5v4 vs. Access97

After reading the responses below I'd make these suggestions.
1. Get A5v4 and give it a try. v5 has a lot of nice features and we haven't seen heap lock problems in v5 as far as I know. There are a couple peculiarities with v4 code, but that could be due to my programming style (still troubleshooting those chunks of code). v4 is available now and a good place to start learning how Alpha does there stuff.
2. Whether you decide to stay with A5 or move to Access, I've found that I can develope in A5 about 10 times faster than Access. That's just the basic stuff. Haven't tried doing VB in it (XBASIC was much easier to pick up quickly). If you learn A5 and still go to Access, you can use A5 for rapid development and testing, and ODBC might allow you to slap together quick little usable apps where the Access' time requirements aren't justifiable or available.

I'm sticking with A5. After my Linux system is set up I'm not sure what I'll be using there (don't feel like learning - or paying for - DB2 or the other rather costly databases available on Linux).

[Geoffrey Hollander]

RE: A5v4 vs. Access97

O.J.

Good questions all. I haven't used FoxPro much in quite awhile. While it still remains the fastest desktop database and one of the most unbreakable, it's becoming old technology. In fact, infoWorld was having trouble at one point trying to find anyone to write about FoxPro as, it seems (though I'm not completely certain), that progressively fewer applications are forthcoming as time goes on. Mostly, Visual FoxPro is often used, I think, to upgrade older but still robust applications made in earlier versions.

As far as FP vs A5, A5 is superior in several ways -- especially as a development tool. The language is more versatile, the built-in capibilities such as "posting" and A5's famous field rules make it, in my opinion, the best way to go for app development and database work in the xBase paradigm.

As far as Access vs. FoxPro for connecting to SQL Server, I don't know, but strongly suspect that VFP would have to connect through ODBC or OLE DB, and that it would always be a current technology-to-legacy technology "work around." Access 2000, however, is designed with SQL Server connectivity and interaction in mind.

Not having written anything in Visual FoxPro, I don't feel qualified to compare Access 2000 with it in prograsmming terms.

Finally, you asked whether one should start with the Jet Database engine and convert to SQL Server later or start with the MSDE right off the bat. As I said to JoAnn, if you are starting small and are likely to remain that way for some time, use Jet. If you know you're headed for SQL Server, use the MSDE. The scale-up is faster, easier and you will be able to continue to use your Access queries, reports, etc.

Hope this addresses all your questions, and remember, it's only an opinion... Thanks for the note.

Best regards,

Geoff Hollander