Very Computer

Hi,
  I'm getting ready to create a database applications for a small
company.  They are planning on setting up a small network of
computers, and each will be access these records.  I have clipper 5.2
but I hear that Foxpro does some neat stuff for networking.  The
network will probably never have over 5 computers, so only 5 people
will be accessing the files at one time, and it probably won't
be at the EXACT time.  It doesn't really matter wether it be DOS or
windows based.  I just want network ease.  Is there another program that
may be better?  Please, any information I can get would be greatly
appreciated.
                                                        --Kent

Quote:>Hi,
>  I'm getting ready to create a database applications for a small
>company.  They are planning on setting up a small network of
>computers, and each will be access these records.  I have clipper 5.2
>but I hear that Foxpro does some neat stuff for networking.

Allowing that Clipper 5.2 lets you use FoxPro .CDXs, I'm curious to
hear from others what advantages FoxPro offers over Clipper,
network-wise, that would constitute the aforementioned "neat
stuff".   Not playing the skeptic, just like to keep up to
speed on these things.

Still waiting for my free (Clipper 5.2 comp upgrade) copy of
Clipper Tools!  It has some neat Netware stuff from the looks
of it.

Jim Hogan
"I'd womanize, but they won't let me."

: Still waiting for my free (Clipper 5.2 comp upgrade) copy of
: Clipper Tools!  It has some neat Netware stuff from the looks
: of it.

That's putting it mildly, it seems to be about what half the
library is for. :-)

I just got around to installing it yesterday, for a completely
unrelated use.  A client wanted to use Ctrl-S to save the GETs
she's editing (instead of Ctrl-W) in order to be consistant with
the application mine's supporting.  But since leftarrow and Ctrl-S
both map to the same INKEY value, you can't distinguish between them
based on that.

Enter Clipper Tools KEYREAD(), which returns a string from the Clipper
keyboard buffer that've already been read and processed.  The key(!)
difference is that the string contains (Clipper's version) of the
entire BIOS key code, allowing you find out whether it was, say, a
Ctrl-S or leftarrow that was last pressed.

So I just wrote a little SETKEY() function that's called whenever
Ctrl-S/leftarrow is hit and then takes proper action.  How have
others dealt with this, through third party libraries, attempting
their own C function, or what?
--

: Hi,
:   I'm getting ready to create a database applications for a small
: company.  They are planning on setting up a small network of
: computers, and each will be access these records.  I have clipper 5.2
: but I hear that Foxpro does some neat stuff for networking.  The
: network will probably never have over 5 computers, so only 5 people
: will be accessing the files at one time, and it probably won't
: be at the EXACT time.  It doesn't really matter wether it be DOS or
: windows based.  I just want network ease.  Is there another program that
: may be better?  Please, any information I can get would be greatly
: appreciated.
:                                                       --Kent

   Since Windows is in place and you apparently have freedom to choose
any DBMS, I'd suggest you consider one of the new object-based DBMS's,
anything from MS Access to Pdox/Windows to Superbase.  They mostly are
network-ready without any extra fussing, and it looks to me like that
is the direction of the future, so why not start with it now?  Although
there's certainly a learning curve with any of these, for a procedural
code programmer, once you get ahold of it, development becomes amazingly
fast--and remarkably bug-free!  Most of the bugs we encounter are in
procedural code, at least that's been my experience.  Eliminating these
really speeds up development.

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

|                                                ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR  |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+