AccPro Singapore (AccPro Computer Systems Pte Ltd)

There are many reasons why you may want to migrate your applications from DBF. The most important ones are integrity, security and scalability.

Integrity - If you have ever worked with DBF files, you will know that they are vulnerable. Misbehaving users can easily corrupt the data files or their indices by shutting down their systems before your application has finished.

A better approach would be, to use a database system that has built-in protection against this type of corruption.

Another form of integrity often missing in DBF applications is protection against widow or orphan records in the database. Invoice detail lines without Invoice Header, Invoices without Customers, etc. We have all seen these, and off course, we have all found a way to check for this. But there always remain one little bug. A real database will have built-in support to protect against this kind of logical corruption, and that may be another important reason to switch from DBF.

Security - We all know how easy it is to work with DBF files. They are industry standard, and very easy to work with. Unfortunately our users know that as well. With all the modern desktop tools it has become very easy to read and update DBF files outside of our applications. You may try to protect your data, but an experienced user just opens the tables in Access or Excel and knows how to update the information through bypassing all the validations and checks you may have in the applications. What you would like to have is a database system that has real protection and allows you to set rights at group and user level.

Scalability - A final good reason to migrate from DBF is the fact that DBF applications usually are getting performance problems when used in a multi-user environment with a large number of concurrent users. Especially applications that make heavy use of browsers are (in)famous for their performance problems.