Thanks, everyone, for suggestions regarding QT. I did find a good book on
QT in the computer section of a bookstore and spent quite some time looking
at it, the "hello world" exercise, and almost purchased it. But I know from
past experience that I am not going to make a lot of progress teaching myself
any form of C language. I am able to make some progress in Basic dialects.
I was doing very well with Liberty Basic, but it just doesnt offer any easy
or practical way to use SQL, other than some cumbersome schemes to call the
dll for SQLite, and the dll for MSAccess mdb jet engine.
I should have made it clear that I am just a hobbyist teaching myself in my
spare time, for fun. Tony Caduto is worried that some employer is losing
money because I wont purchase Delphi. But thanks Tony, for your good advice. And
it IS good advice for someone with money and staff behind them to take that
advice and make something productive happen.
I just thought it would be worthwhile to share with Postgresql users how
much more difficult and less intuitive I found the MySQL download/install for
Windows to be compared to Postgresql Windows download/install.
I get the feeling that my best bet to make some progress teaching myself
something new is to stick with MS Access, and to connect to Postgresql through
ODBC. There are so many books available on Access and VBA, and I purchased
two of them.
I have a very old book on SQL called Lantimes SQL, and I think I will write
some sql scripts to run in PostgresSQL to define and load the test tables in
the back of that book. I have two books by Joe Celko on SQL as well, so if I
just concentrate on such books, I can gain some fluency in SQL.
It is just too bad that there is not a better, more user friendly, well
documented front-end tool for Postgresql in open source. It really is kind of a
marketing issue, in a way. I mean, if someone could really put together some
sort of "Postgresql for Dummies" series with something like Rekall for a
front end with some REAL LIFE examples or projects that ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING
USEFUL, rather than just paint a form to go first/last/next/add/save.... if
someone could put together something like THAT, then, perhaps things would
really take off. I dont know. Just a thought. All the ingredients and raw
materials are lying around just waiting for someone to do that.
I guess MSAccess is fine, except expensive. Also, given the fact that M$ has
pulled the rug out from under Visual Basic, one can never be too certain
what the future will be for something like MSAccess. Even the world of Visual
Foxpro has in some ways slowly eroded because of perennial rumors that
Microsoft will withdraw support for it.
Perhaps the stunning success of the Open Source community is fueled by the
ruthless and fickle nature of companies such as Microsoft. One would like to
build upon some foundation that is not going to disappear in a few years.
Realbasic looks like an attractive alternative to Visual Basic, but then that
is one lone company which is riding the Tusnami of the Windows operating
system (although I guess they are cross platform), but the point is, whatever one
chooses to learn, if it is tied to Windows, then its future is tied to the
whims of Microsoft.