Upgrading 1

[Philka]

I am a psychotherapist, who learned Foxpro 2.6 in order to
develop a patient, managed health care/insurance tracking and billing program for 8+ therapist on our staff. The Private Practice program runs on a Windows peer-to-peer network. All of our billing is done with paper bills/forms. We need to migrate to a billing system that allows for electronic billing. I love the power and flexibility of writing your own program, however, I am trying to figure out whether to by a canned program or learn a more contemporary DBMS.
If I was to proceed with a later edition of Foxpro, which would you suggest? In terms of ease to migrate existing databases (10 different databases)? In terms of ease of learning a new program? In terms of meeting the needs briefly described above? Any insight would prove helpful.
Phil Kawesch

 

[TomKane]

Visual Foxpro would be the latest version of Foxpro. Foxpro itself is a good system, but It wouldn't be as popular as some of the other programming systems out there. Also the programming of Visual Foxpro would be quite different to your existing system and there would be a substantial amount of programming required.

In some ways you'd be better buying a system "off the shelf" purely for convenience - although you'll have to find some way of getting your data out of your current system and into the new one.

I'm not saying it's a better system - please don't flame me - but VB might be a better options simply because of it's popularity and large user base.

Hope this helps...

 

[JRB-Bldr]

There are a lot of debates out on the web about Buy vs Build. There are merits and risks to both approaches.

Long before you begin to think about what language to use, you should be making other decisions regarding the application.

If you want to be a programmer then the pros and cons surrounding your chosen approach might very likely be skewed (for good reasons or not) by your own goals.

Personally, if personal desire to be a programmer were not an issue, I'd approach the question from a purely business approach.
1. How quickly do you need a new program to support electronic billing?
2. What is your budget to get this program working?
3. What resources are available to apply to the program?
4. Are there uniquenesses to your business requirements that are different than offered in a off-the-shelf (vendor supplied) application?
5. If Buy is decided:
A. Perform a Due Diligence on the vendor.
B. Don't rely on salesman promises.
C. Etc.
6. If Build is decided:
A. Do it yourself, or hire outside programming resources?

Like with most business decisions, a particular technology should not be a primary deciding factor. Instead the business goals, priorities, timelines, resources (personnel & financial), etc. should be first identified. Then align the information services strategy to the business strategy. Finally look for appropriate technology to support the aligned information strategy.

Side Technology Note: VFP is an excellent program and would serve you nicely, but realistically there are fewer VFP programmers out there than there are VB programmers. If you want to be one yourself, go for it. Taking that route has some challenges, but if that is your goal, it is worth it.
On the other hand VB, while very popular, does not deal with data manipulation as well as FP/VFP. It primarily uses resultant recordsets (with limited data "massaging" capabilities) and expects database data to be manipulated externally via SQL statements and/or stored procedures within the backend database(s).
Besides the above mentioned business decision issues, the complexity of your program may guide your technological decision.

Good Luck,
JRB-Bldr
VisionQuest Consulting
Business Analyst & CIO Consulting Services
CIOServices@yahoo.com