Paradox 4.0 (and PAL) Q's

#41

L A N T A S T I

one would think i would have caught that before i sent...

ps - i give someone else the honor of the 42nd post! ;o)

#42

"pdox42" <pdox42 (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote

Quote:

On Jul 27, 11:13 am, "Larry DiGiovanni" <nospam@nospam> wrote:
pdox42 wrote:
sure the extra savings and added functionality win out, but
the point to all of this is that "old" stuff works. upgrades
will not be warranted acceptance solely on being "new."

Of course not. But you don't wait for your brakes to fail before you
have
them serviced either, do you?

--
Larry DiGiovanni

it's late, but i feel compelled to reply while i'm here. it will be
short. emPHAsis will be incorrectly applied (by self and others) and
well...

i think fixing things that aren't broke ... and this talk of
change ... although mentioned earlier on, really needs to be gradual.
the thought of ripping out what works and starting over with something
new and foreign and not cheap seems silly. bringing bugs into the
pipeline that don't exist today? sure, one could argue that newer
tech has ways of dealing with this, but i'm not the new guy replacing
myself...

another factor is that we are very small compared to all of you. very
very small. some might even say shrinking. right now there is no
budget for upgrades. when things go down, they get fixed. if that
causes a shuffling of computers or a 24 hour service call, it gets
done. that sounds normal to me. it must sound rather different to
you. not because of what i said, but what you bring to the table.
your experiences. your expectations. i'm an hourly paid employee of
this company. there isn't an IT budget. there isn't an excess. we
are just trying to survive.

repeated above, the input and feedback, overwhelming though it's been,
has been helpful and appreciated. i'm not sure what db we're supposed
to look into. nobody has mentioned looking into "sql" or a scripting
language or something that could help transition us into oop.
(there's got to be an easier way to do things after 15 years,
right??? but it just doesn't seem to be the case.)

i believe i mentioned the oldest of our pc's and the number thereof.
i also mentioned that progress was being made on upgrading at least
one of the "dos boxes." this may even be tested this week! the sole
remaining 486 is fine and the user is quite happy with it. backups
have been made and the sw has been tested on "newer" hw.

the 10 base 2, i believe it was called, and Lastasi (as we called it
for years! only 8 chars, y'know?) have been done away with.

the experiments with a livecd Linux proved rather interesting. it's
called Puppy Linux and it boots completely into ram. that means it is
rather fast when disk access occurs. still, there is a performance
hit for the emulation, but we're not exactly a fortune 500 co w/ a
massive db system. Puppy Linux along with an app called "Dosbox" show
promise. whether or not this can be burned so as to be an emergency
backup or if it might become a future platform we use extending the
lifetime of paradox for dos or even if it just allows us that extra
time to learn about the newer "better" things out there... only time
will tell.

as far as nobody left out there supporting paradox for dos, well,
that's too bad, but then again it doesn't really affect us that much
as we've pretty much had to fix our own probs in house.

so that said, our brakes do get inspected every now and then.
( there's still padding left, believe it or not. ) no, they don't get
checked out as often as they should be. still, they appear to be
working still. and no, they don't need to be ripped out and replaced
because they are old. (besides, it would hurt their feelings
terribly.)

i've rambled and again i've definitely leaned to one side of the
situation. change is happening. slower than most of you are
comfortable with. your concern is appreciated, but wouldn't more
practical suggestions for specific languages and databases be more
useful than simply stating and restating that we need to move on?

we've already proven (to most if not all) that we're in the dark ages
of databases. using DOS. ewwww. and we're crazy for old things!!!
so wouldn't it be obvious that we're not exactly up to par on
terminology and current technologies? how can we define our system in
today's terms if it was a copy of what came before it? made by ppl
that don't have formal education in db design? we didn't create it
based on a textbook. we built ontop of what was done before improving
where we felt we needed it. can't really say what type of db it is...
'cept the one we use. it deals with customer's orders and helps with
the typesetting of some personalized items. each input day is one
database, at the end of the day it is "merged" into a lookup db. the
daily stuff is then rarely referenced except for monthly reports etc.

i feel like if i keep trying to describe our "system" then it sounds
like i'm asking you (all) to design it's replacement for free. that
was not the intent from the start nor is it today. sure, pointers are
greatly appreciated, but so would a short list of languages and db's
y'all use and their "basic" purpose for existing (much later than i
had hoped to stay and so the vocab has left the building).

You are very honest here, and no more critics from me. Every one has his own
settings to fight. For me, even with windows and databases with
web-solutions and all sorts of nice stuff at hand, the management each day
ask why not use a spreadsheet or powerpoint or just a word document. They
haven't a clue about what a database is, even though they use several each
day. Our document server is long over-due pregnant with all sorts of single
documents long forgotten, while our database still can be searched for
information many years back.

Well, I am obviously a database fan, inspite of any ignorant managment, so I
pursue the only sane idea at the time, a SQL server back-end to keep all
data, and a thin-client web-solution for the user.

But since I am only self-thought this has been a long road. I am a dedicated
un-professional doing professional work because I have the interest of
learning new stuff, and because I see the creative possibilitieswith new
tools.

My choice for tools is MS SQL server and MS Visual Studio 2005. With this
you can build fantastic windows applications and web applications. The
easiest language with this is Visual Basic, but still for a new user
everything is like black hell for several weeks. It is recommended to get a
good book with at least 1000 pages and read this like you were at school
again for a couple of weeks, while testing and trying, and you will
eventually find that you can make the damned new stuff to spin.

I know there are many free alternatives to MS out there, but the standard MS
Visual Studio doesn't cost much, and after all your own time investment will
make the small s/w fee like a tiny midget in comparison. But it's a free
world.

Regards
Bjorn

#43

pdox42 wrote:

Quote:

i think fixing things that aren't broke ... and this talk of
change ... although mentioned earlier on, really needs to be
gradual.

Agreed and to my earlier point - you'll be able to change gradually if you
start before some crisis.

I'm not encouraging you to spend a bunch of money - just invest some time
persuing one of the questions you asked in your original post - what options
are out there?

Quote:

i'm not sure what db we're supposed to look into. nobody has mentioned
looking into "sql" or a scripting language or something that could help
transition us into oop.

Based on your previous posts and your description of your present operation,
don't try building something from scratch again. I suggested this once and
I'll suggest it again - if you look hard enough, you'll find Open Source
software that does pretty much what you need. Install it, work with it, get
comfortable in that development environment -- then customize the package as
your company needs. Sourceforge is probably the best place to look. Even
if you can't use most of an app, a database structure is nice to have.

If custom development is the only way to go, there are far more options
nowadays for browser-based applications than for rich GUI apps.

Some folks are heading down Microsoft's .NET road. That's probably the
simplest choice for a robust, easy-to-use visual GUI development, so long as
you don't mind working with MS tools. Your de facto database in this case
would be MS SQL Server.

There are a bunch of Java IDEs you can use as well for GUI development,
which'll have the benefit of turning out apps that can run on PCs, Macs, and
Linux machines (you'd mentioned you were looking at alternative OSes).
You'd probably get up and running quickest with something like JBuilder - I
don't know how cross-platform that is.

If you can go browser based, there are about a jillion possibilities. The
popular ones here are, again, .NET and Java, plus PHP.

Whatever you do, you'll probably be best served building on some
framework -- either a somewhat functional app (ideally) or one of the
development frameworks for your chosen platform. Using a framework gets
around having to reinvent the wheel when it comes to the standard things
present in most applications.

--
Larry DiGiovanni

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Paradox 4.0 (and PAL) Q's

comp.databases.paradox comp.databases.paradox

Re: Paradox 4.0 (and PAL) Q's - 07-31-2007 , 02:49 AM

Re: Paradox 4.0 (and PAL) Q's - 07-31-2007 , 01:58 PM

Re: Paradox 4.0 (and PAL) Q's - 07-31-2007 , 02:04 PM