Compairing Access-dBase

[rudihoste]

Hello,

I've written hundreds of dBase(2,3,4 and5) programs in the good old DOS-days. Till today everything works fine, but now I have a new project to program and I would prefer to do it in a Windows-program. Everyone tells me to use Access, but does Access also has the programming-capabilities of dBase? Can I convert my old programs to a Windows-environment? What is the easiest way for a dBase-programmer to upgrade?

kind regards from Belgium

 

[KartikPancholi]

hi rudihoste ,

It is not advisable to convert all your programms in access, rather it will be better for u to convert all of your programms in Visual Foxpro and start new development in same so that u do have exposure to windows also all of your programms will be window based.

 

[1oldfoxman]

I would tend to agree that Visual FoxPro sounds like a more desirable upgrade path for you. I will warn you, (as an old dBase programmer for many years myself) that VFP is very object oriented and not necessarily as intuitive as we more traditional programmer types would like. It still has the command window and it will execute your old programs (possibly with some minor tweaking of environment). The command line is still there, .PRGs can still be written and executed, but the overall object orientation has a steep learning curve.

I like VFP a lot, but I still struggle with creating new apps, managing classes/subclasses, etc. Just needs a whole mindset change. But Access is just as difficult to change to and not nearly as powerful a tool for a programmer, and will require huge effort to migrate an existing dBase application to.

Just my opinion.
Dennis

 

[rudihoste]

I just found out that our good old dBase got a new life (

http://www.dbase.com)

: dBase Plus and/or dBase SE

 

[cfneumann]

Best direction would be convert all you dBase to dBase SE and then migrate and create with dBase Plus.

Christopher F. Neumann
[dBASE Charter Member]
Blue Star Visual dBASE graduate
ICCP TCP/IP Network Analyst
Data Communications Engineer

http://cfneumann.us