Database is an ‘organized’ collection of related information

Uses – To retrieve information, take decisions, reorganize and process information

Terms in database – Field, Record and File.

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Name _____________________________

Address ___________________________

City_______________ Gender_________

Telephone_________________________

Fields

Record

File

Database Terminology

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Before FoxPro, dBase II was the first widely used database management system.

It was  published by Ashton-Tate for IBM pc and compatibles.

dBase interactive commands lets business users create, edit, and print report on databases.

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dBase was considered difficult to use. user had to memorize all the commands. Some critics said that dbase told the user

less than any other program that existed. Even the dos was notorious for being

cryptic, atleast it displayed played a prompt that told you what drive you were on, but dbase just displayed a dot.

Programmers complained about its inability to create arrays of variables and not including a compiler.

dBase programs run slowly because they were interpreted rather than compiled.

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In response to these complaints, a couple of companies came up with pseudo compiler, one of this was Fox software which developed FoxBase.

FoxBase was widely considered one of the best dbase compilers because its program ran quickly and because it had a high level of compatibility with dBase itself.

FoxPro was a major advancement over FoxBase

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Data base management system It is an interpreter and compiler Interpreter- translates each command

into computer instructions

Compiler- improves performance by translating command to

machine instructions just once.

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FoxPro2- a text-based procedural programming language and DBMS, originally published by Fox Software and later by Microsoft, for MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows, Macintosh, and UNIX

Visual FoxPro- an object-oriented programming language and RDBMS, published by Microsoft, for Microsoft Windows

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Faster than competing products Ability to create EXE files. Impressive user interface. Provide virtually identical programs. Easy to use in windows. Ability to share data easily among

applications in windows. Comfortable for both untrained users

and developers.

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Difference between Foxpro and MS Access

Difference between Foxpro and MS SQL server

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Making pay-rolls

Assessing income tax

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Used only in 32 bit applications

Large amount of data encounters problem

Limits in number of simultaneous user

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Future of FoxPro

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