I have an old Clipper DBF type application that has worked well but times changed and changed long ago. The feature of this DBF, non-GUI, text oriented, application is that it is mostly a list lookup application with few DB changes. A separate Admin program does list management. The list is about 10,000 people long. New requirements justify a rewrite of the programs. Rewrite environments include Mono's C#, JAVA, Python, C++, et. al. , all of which appear supported by SQLite bindings.
The Clipper application is very fast at these lookups which are at a customer service desk where there is a queue of people impatiently waiting in line. Using an incremental lookup text entry box the list quickly narrows to just a few entries and then a quick cursor pick chooses the correct record. Clipper DBF file indexes are a simple key-value and a pointer into a DBF file's records. That is why these lookups are so fast. See this xBase file format description<http://www.clicketyclick.dk/databases/xbase/format/>. It is not a RDBMS as some stated in the past. I am of the opinion that full SQL engine's set based extractions are too slow and may not be suited to an incremental list lookup. However, SQLite appears on the surface to be potentially faster than the its full SQL engine peers. I also like the idea of linking a library into the application, that also looks faster a first blush. I am wondering if SQLite has features that could be used to make these lookups just as quick? Can you point me , so to speak, in the correct direction? -- John S. Wolter President Wolter Works Mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Desk 1-734-665-1263 Cell: 1-734-904-8433
