[fpc-pascal] TDBF (dBase) vs TurboPower FlashFiler

[Graeme Geldenhuys]

Hi,

I'm again revisiting the idea of porting FlashFiler to FPC, but trying
to justify if it is worth it or not. The NexusDB owner offered me (at
one stage) a possible license deal in porting NexusDB to FPC too.

My goal - have a database 100% compiled into the executable.

At this point I'm looking for local access only. So how does TDBF
compare to FlashFiler?

 * Both support local databases
 * Both store a db table per file
 * TDBF uses external files for indexes. Not sure what FlashFiler
   does.
 * TDBF is local database only. FlashFiler is local and client/server.


On the other hand, NexusDB surpassed FlashFiler in features. eg: Views,
Stored Procedures (which I never use), more up to date SQL syntax, and
very very nice FTS (full-text search) support. I've never seen the
NexusDB code, so I have no clue how "portable" it is though.

The pros for TDBF and FlashFiler is 100% free. Benefits will be easy
deployment even for platforms like FreeBSD, OSX and probably even Android.

Please don't mention SQLite - I'm not interested in that. I'm also well
versed on Firebird Embedded (I'm a big fan of Firebird) - and I fully
know the deployment issues under OSX, and no official support for
Android (but apparently it is coming).

So with the above said, what is the benefits of FlashFiler over TDBF?
Any old Turbo Pascal or Delphi developers here that could comment?

Regards,
  - Graeme -

-- 
fpGUI Toolkit - a cross-platform GUI toolkit using Free Pascal
http://fpgui.sourceforge.net/

My public PGP key:  http://tinyurl.com/graeme-pgp