Re: Where do I start

Andrew Nation wrote:

> Hello anyone,
>
> We are thinking of redeveloping our 500 program text based SOP POP Stock etc
> application that uses 2000 flat files.
>
> We think we want to use Linux / Postgres & as a for the lanuage we have no
> idea although someone here has suggested C.
>
> Has anyone got anything in the way of some suggestions?
>
> Has anyone translated an application of this size before? We translated a
> similar sized application to Pick/D3 several years ago but we dont think
> that environment appropriate for us now.
>
> Does anyone know any good books to buy
>
> Are there any good training courses available in the UK for Pgsql.
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Thankyou
>
> Andrew Nation
>

This is really a "how long is a piece of string" question. There's a million
ways, and it really depends where you want to end up.

For what it's worth, I am currently converting a D3/Pick app of similar size.
I'm writing all the UI using Glade (i.e. GNOME/Gtk) to generate C code, and
trying as much as possible, to make the "back end" logic separate from the UI.
I've written a bunch of routines so that I can map a tuple from a relational
database and manipluate that in the same way you would a Pick item (i.e.
functions for insert(), delete(), replace() an attribute in Pick speak). Nearly
all of the Postgres  libpq semantics are isolated in this "library" so if need
be I can use any other SQL database as a back end.

If you program in C, it's also quite easy to create quite complex triggers
using SPI. (Although this may be possible in other languages ?).

Bryan