Some quick questions:
1) How many users will it have? And are these users all internal to the company (i.e. onsite and you can dictate their hardware/software decisions)?

2) What do you mean by thin client? I usually use thin client to mean a software client/server architecture, such as web app/web server, where most the smarts/work is done on the server. But I think you mean something different - does your "thin client" imply some type of hardware (i.e. are you referring to a blade client and heavy server hardware setup)?

3) If the answer to #2 is hardware, then my next question would be what type of client/server architecture do you need/want? A thick client (which does most the work) talking directly to the DB (or to a thin server which wraps the DB)? You seem set against HTML web app, but there are other options there as well (Flash, Java web start, etc.).

Walter.


On Oct 14, 2005, at 9:44 AM, Matthew Jarvis wrote:

Currently we have a legacy system using MS Access as a front end to Postgresql. This beast is a monster app, remarkably stable all things considered, but it forces us to maintain a bunch of Windows boxes for day to day access to the thing.

Our ultimate goal is to go all thin client for access to our central database app. (As an interesting side note, the thin client idea is also because of the lower power consumption. We are in the process of planning a new manufacturing facility and be off the power grid)

We are weighing our options:

- We can leverage my skill set w/ Visual FoxPro (VFP) as the front end, but that leaves us dependant on MS for VFP's future and at least one Windows server as the central host. (Believe it or not, being a VFP guy this is not my first choice).

- We can rewrite the app using PHP and web browsers for access, but some of our forms are incredibly complex. I sent a couple screen shots to a friend who is something of a PHP expert and he said these two forms alone could take several months to script properly. Plus, I'm not a big fan of browsers for complex data entry - they will drive my users (and me) nuts with all the mouse clicks and page reloads. Plus a redesign to simplify things means some big training issues.

- We can develop a new app using a RDBMS that is platform independant or, if necessary, Linux only if we have to (since our thin clients can boot to anything we want). But this means learning a) a new front end, and b) a new language or scripting language

The boss sent me some info on some packages to research, which I list below:

GnomeDB
KexiDB
Rekall
Bond
Dabo (I added this one)

Are there others I should consider? The only one I'm at all familiar with is Dabo which I DL'd the beta quite some time ago but only played with it for a very short time.

I am looking for a feature rich GUI for form creation, report building, the usual stuff we see in VFP and Access.


Matthew S. Jarvis
IT Manager
Bike Friday - "Performance that Packs."
www.bikefriday.com
541/687-0487 x140
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


_______________________________________________
EUGLUG mailing list


_______________________________________________
EUGLUG mailing list
[email protected]
http://www.euglug.org/mailman/listinfo/euglug

Reply via email to