Re: Trying to learn the PL/pgsql procedural language

On 28/10/14 07:49, Merlin Moncure wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 7:10 PM, John R. Sowden
> <jsowden@americansentry.net> wrote:
>> I have been a foxpro/dos programmer for my small business for about 35
>> years.  I use linux for all but database stuff.  For db I use foxpro/dosemu.
>> It looks like pg is my best bet for linux/sql. After reading an o'reilly
>> book on pg (_practical postgresql_), not one word was mentioned in the
>> procedural language chapter about displaying text.  I write complete
>> applications (in foxpro), not just queries and forms.
>>
>> What am I missing here?  I am not interested in trying to learn C, C++,
>> Java, or Perl in order to read sql databases.
> I feel your pain.  Being a foxpro expat myself, I understand the
> simplicity of having a single environment to handle writing basic
> business applications quickly and am equally bewildered as to why
> rapid development platforms seemed to have fallen away.
>
> Well, here's the bad news: for various reasons (some good, some bad)
> the market has moved away from this model pretty much for good.  I
> used to hang on the hope that delphi would carry the torch for a while
> but that ship has also sailed, sadly.
>
> The good news is that you've come to the right place.  postgres it the
> only choice that will meet your requirements.  Coming from foxpro it's
> the only thing that is both powerful enough and not very expensive.
> For the most part, the data processing you've done will drop in
> cleanly and pl/pgsql will work well for that.  But what about UI
> design?
>
> For my part the recommendation is going to be to jump in and learn
> javascript.  I'm not going to sugar coat it: it's going to suck but
> with the proliferation of so many javascript frameworks and libraries
> once you've got it under your belt you should be in a better place for
> writing applications.
>
> For middleware/web server development, it's a lot more complicated
> situation.  I happen to like node.js and think it's a good place to go
> for application development writing but it's very much a personal
> preference thing.  I do not recommend the 'enterprise stacks' -- java,
> c++, .net.  Stay with the stuff that's geared towards web development
> (if not node.js, php, ruby, python, perl are all reasonable choices).
>
> merlin
>
>
If you do go for Java middleware, then I recommend WildFly
(http://wildfly.org) as the AppServer, it is free and very powerful.
But this route is not for the faint of heart!

AngularJS (https://angularjs.org) is a very good JavaScript framework.
Warning, JavaScript frameworks provoke strong passions and fierce
partisanship!

You may also want to consider upgrading your users to Linux in the
longer term.


Cheers,
Gavin