Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

  • Congratulations Mike Lewis on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Clipper is still being used?????

Status
Not open for further replies.

jeep2001

Programmer
Dec 15, 2005
134
US
Forgive me, I was a Clipper head from 1986-1996.
At that point, I moved to the world of Visual Basic and Access. Clipper was awesome...unfortunately CA did not handle it right. What version of Clipper do you use, what library do you use, and how does it behave under XP.
Does anyone use Alaska....and what ever happened to Visual Objects...
 
Hm, probably wish I'd have gone the VB way as well, in an aftertought... well...
You see, I still can't make up my mind ;-)

Current versions of Clipper in use are 5.2e and 5.3b, if anyone still uses 5.01 they are in big trouble.
Libraries in use depend on the project, but usually it's CT3 and NanFor.
Using Clipper Apps under XP is a fine art, only properly manageble using the proper linker, and there's only 1: Blinker 7. It's quite hard to get, but once you have it, it gives proper performance when used with XP and Win2k3. All older versions have trouble solcing the 'keyboard loop' problems usually found with Clipper (it's a VM problem actually)
Never used Alaska XBase++, and never going to either... quit actively developing with Clipper. Switched/Upgraded to xHarbour in the meantime, but still development is none.
VO is dead fish in the water, it never properly solved the problem is was designed to solve: Bring Clipper to Windows. This task is long 'solved' by xHarbour/FWH (fwh at combination, and commercial xHarbour ( is giving it a new go with VXH (Visual xHarbour). (Several other GUI libs are available, free and commercial).

If you want my advise:
Need to get old Clipper code compiled for XP and with new performance? : go for xHarbour (may as well be the free version from Need to 'fix' a Clipper app for a new life in Windows? : go for VB/Access, as that's what you are already familiar with, (and don't hesitate to redesign the app from the ground up, it probably needs it!)

HTH
TonHu
 
Hm I still use summer 87 and there are nio big troubles even works fine with WIN XP.

because of totally different behaviour of WIN OPSYS xBase conversion practically means you have to rewrite whole application, except if your dos app uses hotkey strategy (you know: F2 add / F3 delete ...). I agree that the only two solutions are xHarbour or Visual Foxpro. You get the most compatibility there.
Good luck!
 
Alaska xBase++ is a good 'get you by' solution, if the cheque book is handy! I have converted a big Clipper app to this and it works pretty well - a few niggles, but the client is generally happy.

VFP was the way to go for me, not used xHarbour.

I do still support and develop some quite old apps developed in Clipper and I still love it - but time moves on!

Good luck

Regards

Griff
Keep [Smile]ing
 
Still use Clipper (5.2e) for some things.

Still supporting a 5.2e app that's in use throughout the UK.

Tried VO, but eventually gave up with it and went the Delphi route.

Have tried xBase++, but gave it up for xHarbour, which I still sometimes use.

 
I migrated to VFP in 2002. I am currently using 7.0 and 8.0

Very soon, i will be using 9.0

Ali Koumaiha
Wireless Toyz
Farmington Hills, Michigan
 
VFP 9 is pretty good TeknoSDS... I've been using it in production for a while now - no problems at all.

I don't migrate apps from 5 or 6 to it though... just for new apps.



Regards

Griff
Keep [Smile]ing
 
I have a an app that is being used with 130 franchises (offices) and to deploy the new version of my POS to them, i am gonna have to redistribute the runtime dll to them *shivers*

it is going to be hell for the first week :)

Ali Koumaiha
Wireless Toyz
Farmington Hills, Michigan
 
Hi !
We have more than 70 applications developed using
clipper 5.2e, they are performing well... clients are
happy and they are not asking for any fancy changes.
It is very nice to use this compiler. For GUI we
are using Developer2000.

 
I still have about two dozen mission critical apps in 5.2e. We are slowly moving everything to ColdFusion. There is just so much legacy code it will be years before nothing is in clipper.

All of my data mining is now on ColdFusion and we access our dBaseIII tables all day evryday with little or no problem while the legacy data entry folks enter thousands of records a day.

Lyndon
 
Lyndon,

How good is ColdFusion with the memo fields - are you using dBIII ones or native Clipper?

Just interested, I looking for a Linux solution reading VFP tables on an Apache server!

Regards

Griff
Keep [Smile]ing
 
I use the native dBaseIII file structure and indices.

ColdFusion reads the memo fields just fine. It's really a function of the Microsoft Dbase ODBC Driver that determines how ColdFusion interacts with any data file. In my W2K environment, ColdFusion just passes SQL statments on to the ODBC driver.

The thing to be sure of, before you invest too much, is that you're happy with the database driver that will facilitate your connection between the web server and the data file.

I have very few ColdFusion processes where I write to dBaseIII tables; just a few places where I switch a logical field.

When I upgrade a process to ColdFusion data entry I move the data to SQL Server and retire the clipper application.

Do you currently have a ColdFusion Server running? If not I could do some add/edit tests for you into memo fields. And let you know how it goes. Of course I could only test dBaseIII as I don't have Fox Pro. I guess you could send me some practice tables.

Lyndon

Lyndon
 
Hi

I have no ColdFusion running, at the moment I use raw HTML - via .asp pages - to access VFP databases via the OLEDB driver, as I'm told the ODBC one is not reliable.

I ask about the memos because I'm looking to find a Linux solution using something similar - but the ODBC route won't work there.

Thanks for your help



Regards

Griff
Keep [Smile]ing
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top