Contemplating a change to Valentina

[Greg Olson-Hyde]

Hi,

I hope I am on the correct list!

I am currently trying to evaluate Valentina with a view to purchase.

A bit of background:

I have an almost complete REALbasic app that is primarily a database  
that will ship with around 50,000 records that users can modify, add  
to, or delete from. So far, I have been using the built-in SQLite  
database engine that comes with RB 2009 r2.1.

The main reason I am contemplating Valentina, is that doing a 'whole  
word search' in SQLite is extremely difficult. For example, if I   
search my records for the word "hat", SQLite returns 16,000 records  
containing "that", "what" etc. as well as "hat", whereas there are  
actually only 39 records containing the whole word "hat". I have tried  
using FTS2 (built in to SQLite) but it is not totally satisfactory and  
is making the code VERY 'lumpy' while creating a large number of  
'temporary' tables to get the job done.

I am wading through the Valentina documentation, so the answers to my  
questions may be there, but I would like some expert opinion - thanks.

A couple of questions:

1. My complete app, on the Mac using SQLite, would consist of the RB  
file (10MB) and the SQLite database file (63MB) - what files would I  
have to ship if I use Valentina - is the database engine built-in  
(V4RB.rbx?) or is it external to the RB app? Approximately what sizes  
would they be? I am hoping I don't have to ship the 80MB Valentina  
Studio Pro app with my app! I will also be shipping for Windows and  
Linux.

2. I am looking at the "Choosing a Style of Coding" web site on  
Valentina (http://valentina-db.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=valentina:articles:coding_style 
). As none of my apps have shipped, I guess I can change to any coding  
style. Which one would be best? I foresee my app primarily being a non- 
networked, single user, local database, although, someone, I am sure,  
is going to want to network the app, so I don't want to close the  
network door.

3. How hard is it to do the "whole word search" for 'hat' in Valentina  
and only return the 39 records?

4. What other search options are available in Valentina? I assume I  
can do: 'Begins with', 'Ends with', 'Contains', 'Greater than', 'Less  
than', 'Is', 'Isn't' - are there others?

5. Are my existing SQLite database tables able to be imported into  
Valentina or do I have to create them from the beginning? (no big  
deal, would just make life easier!)

6. How easy would it be to import the data from my existing SQLite  
database?

7. There are a large number of examples that downloaded with V4RB_4,  
which ones would be the best to start with? I find them confusing as  
there is no "Read Me" to explain what they do - although some of them  
are self explanatory.

8. I have tried the tutorial (http://valentina-db.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=valentina:products:adk:v4rb:tutorial:lesson1 
) - but could not get it to work - is there a file of the completed  
tutorial I could look at to see where I went wrong?

Cheers

Greg Olson-Hyde
Sydney Australia

2.8 GHz Quad-Core Mac Pro
Mac OS X 10.5.8
RB 2009r2.1 Pro

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