Re: Getting started - Interfacing questions

On Tue, Mar 08, 2005 at 09:27:39AM -0800, operationsengineer1(at)yahoo(dot)com wrote:
>
> --- David <dbree(at)duo-county(dot)com> wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 08, 2005 at 01:53:06AM -0500, John DeSoi
> > wrote:

> > One restriction (sort of) that I'm trying to follow
> > is that my system is
> > Debian and I'm _trying_ to stay within the Debian
> > packaging scheme as
> > much as possible, although it's not a strict
> > requirement.
> >
> > > http://us3.php.net/features.commandline.php
> >
> > I have this page up at the moment and will study it.
> > Thanks for the link.
>
> dave,
>
> i'm in a similar situation.

Yes, I've been following that thread closely. I am keeping it archived
for when I can understand all that's being discussed. :)

> i'm developing a quality
> db. i settled on php/html, apache, adodb and
> postgresql 7.4.5 (using cygwin of my dev box, linux
> will run on the production box). i'm also using
> manuel lemos' forms class.
>
> i've done a vb / access db and i've done two access /
> access dbs - not as my primary job, but b/c they
> needed to get done.
>
> this is my first foray into open source application
> development. the approach i'm taking is *not* to try
> and create the gold standard code on my first
> application - it takes too much time to get anything
> done. i'm gaining valuable experience in why the gold
> standard is gold as i'm hacking out bronze. ;-)

Yes. I think I may be looking too hard at the "gold standard" you
mentioned. I just need to do more experimenting.

> i found something that worked well and then recreated
> it as required knowing i could be using classes or
> functions for lots of stuff - but not knowing exactly
> how. i will likely go back and update the code to get
> it closer to gold standard - except i will then have
> the experience and background to better understand
> what the heck is going on.

I think that is necessary to some extent. We have to start somewhere.
The only problem is that if you get quite a large code base, sometimes
you have to knock down a whole building and then start almost from the
ground up. What I'm referring to here is seeing a major hunk of code
that needs to be completely redone. If this is a production system, it
can get troublesome.

One case in point is the records-keeping system that I'm considering
converting to a postgresql database system. I originally wrote it
several years ago. It was and still is text based in its terminal
support. It originally depended upon termcap support - written for an
entirely different system than Linux or Windows. A while back, I
decided to convert it to curses terminal support. Throughout the
program, there are several menus to deal with. Each routine had to be
rewritten and it took quite a bit of time and work before everything was
working (practically) foolproof again. Of course, I doubt if one would
come across such a drastic change as that with what we are concerned
with here.

> is it more work, yes. is it a better education? i
> think so.

You can certainly learn a lot. And actually, in a case like this, much
of this can only be learned by hands-on experience.

> i'd just pick one and go with it. is apache really
> that much of a drain on the system? it sounds like
> what you really need is something like access
> (simplicity to just get the job done) - but i presume
> you don't use windows.

No, as I said in another message, I don't even have a Windows system
that supports NTFS, plus the fact that I prefer to stay away from
windows as much as possible.

> what about the db tools available from open office?
> i've never used them, but they may be able to help
> you. it may be worth investigating.

Perhaps. I have OOo 1.1.2 ... I haven't looked at whether this version
has DB support or not, but I saw on a recent post in some ML where, as I
understood it, DB support is not until OO. 2.0 I will check it out.