Have you looked into the possibility of using either openoffice.org or Gnumeric as the forms container?
I'm a bit more familiar with Gnumeric's (built hello_form_world) model, but there is a fair bit of documentation on using it for things like invoice processing and pushing stuff to a RDBMS backend. If your problem child application is mostly VB6 you might want to consider porting it to http://www.realsoftware.com/products/screenshots/linux/ REALBasic which is a commercial product aimed as a mostly compatible cross-platform visual basic replacement. On 10/14/05, Matthew Jarvis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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 > [email protected] > http://www.euglug.org/mailman/listinfo/euglug > > > -- http://Zoneverte.org -- information explained Do you know what your IT infrastructure does? _______________________________________________ EUGLUG mailing list [email protected] http://www.euglug.org/mailman/listinfo/euglug
