A layman's guide to the merits of Clarion
(Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

Clarion Accesses Data Anywhere
Clarion uses proprietary database drivers to make every database look alike. This produces "database neutral" applications that can easily be retargeted from one database to another. Importantly, there is no cost associated with this portability, because Clarion database drivers optimize database operations.

As a result, the performance of a Clarion database application is indistinguishable from an application written in the C language using a native database interface. Only a very talented C or Delphi programmer can match the performance of a Clarion program. It is impossible to produce Clarion performance with Visual Basic or PowerBuilder.

Clarion database access assumes that every database engine contains maximum functionality. Features that are missing in a database engine are supplied by its Clarion database driver. This approach optimizes Clarion database access by choosing efficient access functions and by supplementing or replacing inefficient or missing functions.

Clarion Maximizes Database Throughput
Clarion Database Accelerators provide benefits that are indistinguishable from (but less expensive than) the benefits that would be derived by upgrading database server hardware. This technology fine-tunes client applications at run-time, minimizing requests to the database server and overlapping processing at the client with processing at the server. These benefits are automatically incorporated into every Clarion application produced by the application generator.

Clarion templates are aware of the implicit capacities of their design components. So, a browse template “knows” how many rows can be displayed in a list box and a report template “knows” how many detail lines fit on a page. Accordingly, Clarion applications “buffer” data perfectly, minimizing the load on the database server. Local data buffers are then reused as needed making it unnecessary, for example, to access data from the server to redisplay a prior page. Automatic time-outs assure accurate up-to-the-minute information.

Clarion applications can also overlap processing on the client and server by using “asynchronous readahead”. For example, after receiving a page of data for a browse procedure, the driver immediately requests a second page from the server. By the time the user requests the next page, the data has already arrived. Similarly, a report procedure can be retrieving the next page of data while it formats the current page, eliminating the lesser of the time required to access all of the data or to format all of the output.

Clarion Applications Are Fast
Consider Microsoft Access. Access is a database manager. You program Access by providing a script-a role to play. Then Access "acts out" your application for you. That's why Access is so huge. It is full of all the "parts" it must play to perform every application imaginable. Access is also as slow as a snail because it must "interpret" scripts from its language into machine language while your application is running.

Clarion doesn't work that way. The application generator creates source code written in the Clarion language. The Clarion language has been carefully designed to be understandable to programmers-it can't be executed by a computer. Turning source code into a form that a computer can understand is called "compiling". The Clarion optimizing compiler reads Clarion source code and writes extremely efficient machine language. This process occurs during the development cycle. So Clarion applications run about as fast as a computer can go. For the record, Delphi compiles applications like Clarion. Visual Basic interprets applications like Access. PowerBuilder is partially compiled and runs a little faster than Visual Basic.

(Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

This Text is (C) Copyrighted by TopSpeed Corporation.