TechTips: Paradox from a Microsoft Access Perspective, Part I
- From: Sundial Services <info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2005 20:24:28 -0500
Call it a matter of publicity, call it what you wish, but it's a fact that
many people will encounter Paradox for Windows for the first time after a
much longer exposure to Microsoft developer products .. particularly
Microsoft Access. I would like to begin this TechTip series by giving you
a lightweight comparison of the two systems - assuming that you know a fair
bit about Microsoft Access and not too much about Paradox. And I would
like to emphasize from the very start that "I Am Not Here To Bury Caesar,
Nor To Praise Him." These points are by no means exhaustive.
++ AGE AND PROVENANCE: Paradox is actually the older system; much older.
If one traces its lineage back to the original DOS version, Paradox is not
too much younger than dBASE. It was a fundamental improvement over the
dBase file format, but one must keep in mind that this system does,
nonetheless, draw its lineage from the systems OF THAT DAY. The Paradox
for Windows system is a complete rewrite which preserves only the
table-file format. It is only the Windows version that we shall discuss.
Microsoft Access is a relative newcomer --a product from the late
Windows-3.1 days, in which Microsoft proved that you =could= provide a
nearly-complete implementation of SQL-92 on a 16-bit Windows desktop. The
basis of the system is therefore quite modern ... an SQL engine.
==============
++ GENERAL STRUCTURE:
The entire "world" of Microsoft Access resides in one file -- the .MDB.
This is another throwback to the SQL philosophy, as the internal structure
of the entire file is actually "an SQL database." By contrast, the Paradox
system defines its "world" to be "a directory," and it stores information
in numerous separate files. (A single Paradox table, for instance, might
consist of a half-dozen files or more.)
The capabilities of the two systems -- what it offers to you as an end-user
or as an application designer -- are actually comparable. You have forms
(input windows); reports; queries; and scripts of some kind. But each one
is quite different in its philosophy. Both systems try to do more-or-less
the same thing, but they do it in very different ways. We'll be talking
about these differences in later TechTips.
===============
++ LANGUAGE STRUCTURE:
Both of these systems are programmable -- both have built-in scripting
capabilities. But this, also, is where the similarity ends.
The Microsoft world (not just this little corner of it) is built around
"Visual Basic." In Access, there's a single Visual Basic world and a
"flat" set of subroutines that exist in one or modules .. subroutines (subs
and functions) that are linked to the controls on forms by means of their
name.
The Paradox for Windows world, per contra, is based on Pascal. "Turbo
Pascal" is what put Borland International on the map just as surely as
"BASIC" enabled William Gates III to not care that he never graduated from
Harvard. Paradox for Windows provides a very intricate programming model
that is heavily indebted to Pascal.
Paradox provides a completely unique system that you will probably find
nowhere else .. a hierarchical structure of objects ("UIObjects"), each one
of which can have code attached to them, each one of which can be given an
opportunity to work with events. This is a multi-level system and it's not
based on names. It's much stronger than what Microsoft Access provides.
----
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.
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