[KLUG Members] database programming question

[Rusty Yonkers]

> Just when everyone thought this thread had died ...  it's back! 
> :-)

Just to redirect and refocus the thread a little bit....

First, thanks for the flamewar (I really mean it), I have gotten a
lot of information from it.

Let me explain just a little bit more about our environment.  We have
like 40 users on the system.  They are like totally not computer
savvy (or even very technical).  The FileMaker 6 database has lots of
information in it but the amount of transactions is fairly low in my
estimation.  I do not think that I am going to have any performance
issues from any of the solutions.  

Currently we track clients in the system, what is wrong with them,
what we are doing to cure them, and then follow-up with them
afterwards to see if they are "staying on the wagon".  

The current system has multiple databases (it is like dBaseIII in
that it uses a separate database for each table) which is good.  The
problem is that the databases are not even close to normalized.  The
system will gather information in one table.  Then when a record is
created in a second table much of the information from the first
table is copied into the second table when the record is created and
then from that point on it uses the information from the second
table.  Talk about duplication of data!  

The users have full access to all fields of the tables at all times
to change any data in any table.  The structure of the forms (layouts
in FileMaker lingo) is such that we cannot lock any fields at any
time if we ever want to do a find on them without duplicating every
layout and creating a find routine for them and even then the users
can easily get around that.  Obviously data integrity is right out
the window currently.  Believe it or not though auditors have said
that this is one of the best systems that they have seen!  

The report writer in FileMaker SUCKS!  To do calculations and sums I
need to create fields in the database table that will do the
calculation to be able to display it on the layout or report.  The
ODBC connectivity in anything before FM7 is not worth talking about
at this point.  The new FM7 Advanced server that is suppose to be out
next month is suppose to have full ODBC functionality.  FM7 also puts
multiple tables in a single file finally.  FM7 will also give us more
granularity with locking fields in layouts and still be able to do
finds on them.  We could do the work in FM7 and that is a possibility
but we will be paying $7000.00 for the upgrade, which for this place
is a lot of coin.  

I kinda like the possibility of PHP but don't think that I could get
all the functionality that I would really like in the system.  I am
really leaning towards using MySQL and RealBASIC for the system.  It
looks like there are people that are doing that combination and using
ODBC for the connection piece.  I am not adverse to PostGres but see
much more written on MySQL so far (I may be looking in the wrong
places though).  A copy of RealBASIC Pro is like only $400 so it
would not be a really huge expense.  I looked on Amazon and it seems
that there are a number of books on programming in RealBASIC too,
that is a good thing.  The other nice thing with RB is that it is
cross-platform, and yes I would love to give a presentation down the
road if I use it since one of the platforms is Linux.

I do know that if I can pull this off and get a working program from
this that eventually they want to put a billing module in this too. 
But I do not think that will affect the selection too much.  I think
they want scheduling too and that might affect the selection. Hmmmm
so much to think about.


=====
Russell C. Yonkers Jr. 
CNE, MCP, A+, CCNA, Linux+, Server+, Network+ certified
-----------------------------------------
Currently using SuSE 9, Mac OS X, Windows 2000, and WinXP 
And yes I run a network at home with Linux and Windows servers
See my personal website http://www.geocities.com/therustycook
Or my consulting site at http://www.atomicsupergeek.com


		
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail