Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Welcome

A web developer who used to work with us told me once that "Welcome to my site" was one of the most commonly used phrases on homepages. Ironically I am starting my blog using an overused phrase, but who am I to break with tradition.

I have wanted to start a blog about Advantage Database Server for some time and now seemed to be a good time to get going. I will do my best to post consistently about various projects I am working on along with a few tips and tricks for Advantage users. Hopefully you will find some interesting and useful information here in the coming weeks.

My current project is an automated query tester written in Visual Studio 2005 using C#. It has been a fun project and like so many projects has taken longer than I originally planned due to feature creep. Just when I think I have it the way I want I think of something else to include. So I spend some more time implementing another feature. I have a feeling that this project will continually evolve.

The good news is that the test tool works with Advantage Version 9.0. Using a standard set of 20 queries my initial tests show a 15% speed improvement over version 8.1. This test covers some specific queries which we have been using over several years to internally benchmark Advantage so your results may vary. If you are using the 9.0 beta or plan on using version 9 in the future let me know how your performance has changed.