Developer 5.5 or 7

[Kirk P]

It has been years since I've built my last custom app, I would like to blow the dust off this old stuff, Improve and remodel abit. My question is Developer 5.5 good enough or should I sink a bundle into 7. What I need most of all is the abiity to make runtimes of these apps. Will 5.5 and 7, open my 3.0 files? I am at this point probably just above a beginner now. What would you do?

[Fenton]

Do you already have Developer 5.5? It was pretty good, and you could do a lot. But, if your time is worth much, you should move right up to 7. One of my reasons would that, while the relational model of 7 could be said to be more complex, in actual practice, especially in simple multi-table (which is almost anything you'd want to build) solutions, 7 eliminates so many small work-arounds that it is easier to use. So, more powerful yet easier to use. Not really a question about which is better.

Another reason why 7 is better is that you are at the beginning of learning how such things as relationships and scripts work. If you learn it in 5.5, there are many things that are different in 7, to the point where some of what you've learned (especially details and work-arounds) will have to be unlearned later, when you finally move up to 7.

7 needs more horsepower and operating system than 5.5, but if you're running XP, I imagine you've got a fairly modern computer. I don't know what speed is the "threshold of comfort" on XP, but I'd imagine around 1.5 GHz? And the runtime users, what do you expect they have?

So, if you've got 5.5, you could go ahead and start dusting. But, if you're serious, and intend to be doing this in the future, you might want to think about 7.

[Kirk P]

Fenton

Thanks for thoughts, I have the opportunity to purchase a coopy of 5.5. I am glad you brought up who the users will be, and they could be anywhere from Win98 on a 486, to the latest. I would say I need to be compatible down to at least pentium >200 mmx or so. I cater to the construction trades so the sky is the limit. Some only use their PC as coffee cup holders so they don't get their plans wet. Wouild 7 even work on hese antiques

I know I could look some of this up easyily, but do appreciate a personal perspective

Thanks again

kirk

[CobaltSky]

Hi,

7 Does require a recent OS to run. Nothing earlier than Win 2000 or XP on the MS side and nothing earlier than X on the Mac.

There are plenty of situations where that isn't a proble, but there are also some folk still using 5.5 and 6.0 on older boxes.

[Reed]

I'm running 7 on a PII 400 with 192MB of ram, and it's pretty slow (esp in layout mode, but that won't matter for runtimes) The main problem is that if you want to support Win98, NT, and MacOS9, you need to use FMD6 or lower.