Our recent formulation of the analytic and variational Slater-Roothaan (SR) method, which uses Gaussian basis sets to variationally express the molecular orbitals, electron density and the one body effective potential of density functional theory, is reviewed. Variational fitting can be extended to the resolution of identity method, where variationality then refers to the error in each two electron integral and not to the total energy. However, a Taylor series analysis shows that all analytic ab initio energies calculated with variational fits to two-electron integrals are stationary. It is proposed that the appropriate fitting functions be charge neutral and that all ab initio energies be evaluated using two-center fits of the two-electron integrals. The SR method has its root in the Slater's Xα method and permits an arbitrary scaling of the Slater-Gàspàr-Kohn-Sham exchange-correlation potential around each atom in the system. The scaling factors are the Slater's exchange parameters α. Of several ways of choosing these parameters, two most obvious are the Hartree-Fock (HF) α HF values and the exact atomic α EA values. The former are obtained by equating the self-consistent Xα energy and the HF energies, while the latter set reproduce exact atomic energies. In this work, we examine the performance of the SR method for predicting atomization energies, bond distances, and ionization potentials using the two sets of α parameters.The atomization energies are calculated for the extended G2 set of 148 molecules for different basis set combinations. The mean error (ME) and mean absolute error (MAE) in atomization energies are about 25 and 33 kcal/mol, respectively for the exact atomic, α EA , values. The HF values of exchange parameters, α HF , give somewhat better performance for the atomization energies with ME and MAE being about 15 and 26 kcal/mol, respectively. While both sets give performance better than the local density approximation or the HF theory, the errors in atomization energy are larger than the target chemical accuracy. To further improve the performance of the SR method for atomization energies, a new set of α values is determined by minimizing the MAE in atomization energies of 148 molecules. This new set gives atomization energies half as large (MAE ∼ 14.5 kcal/mol) and that are slightly better than those obtained by one of the most widely used generalized gradient approximations. Further improvements in atomization energies require going beyond Slater's element-dependent functional form for exchange employed in this work to allow exchange-correlation interactions between electrons of different spin. The MAE in ionization potentials of 49 atoms and molecules is about 0.5 eV and that in bond distances of 27 molecules is about 0.02 Å. The overall good performance of the computationally efficient SR method using any reasonable set of α values makes it a promising method for study of large systems.