> Hi All, > > I've avoided using SQL now for many years as I really don't want to > spend the time to learn that stuff. Flat files or a simple > master-detail are really good enough for me. > > But... I need an alternative. I've been using Absolute database but > their filtering performance is well behind the rest. I'm thinking of > Access but I seem to be having trouble using indexes as I get a > "current provider does not support the necessary interface for Index > functionality" error. > > Can anyone advise a suitable alternative? I'm using D2005 although I > do have access to D2006. > > Standard application for me is a flat file table with 500,000 records > around the 100Mb mark. I need to be able to filter and run analysis > on the filtered table. I use the raw filter strings as this gives me > the most flexibility - perhaps it's just because I'm used to it. > > Cheers, > Chris. >
Hi Chris, That 'SQL stuff' is maybe more useful than you could possibly imagine, and a lot simpler to learn than you might think. Sure, you can get fairly hairy with it, but there's a lot of things even a simple sql query can do for you. That aside, have you considered using DBISAM from Elevate Software (http://www.elevatesoft.com/) at all ? I've had some experience with it at some of our customers and I can vouch for its strength and speed. It's not free (unfortunately!), but it has intelligent indexing (and some killer 'SQL stuff' :P) and the filtering is very powerful too. We've used it on tables that are over 1.6GB in size without any crashes, and I can strongly recommend it. It supports cursors as well, so you can scroll backwards and forwards through your datasets. Another alternative is to convert your data to a textual format (e.g. XML) and use ,Net datasets (tho I wouldn't recommend it!), or our own TextFileParser and TextDSN products (available from http://www.gwacc.com/software.htm) which will let you use a simple delimited (comma, tab etc.) text file as a database via ODBC. I'll be honest though: If you're not willing to learn SQL, then you may be destined for the slow road :\ Kind regards. John. _______________________________________________ Delphi-DB mailing list Delphi-DB@elists.org http://www.elists.org/mailman/listinfo/delphi-db
