I'm a big fan of PHP, have done some amazing things writing routines that are very reusable with good table structures. Have been mostly using it with MySQL since I don't own Oterro. I've been a loyal user of RBase for 20 years and would like to use it as a back end for all of my new web systems but can't afford Oterro right now. I did setup a quick system with RBase 6.5+ and it worked OK. By making use of the RBase sys_% tables I think you could write some very good reusable functions and an excellent front end in PHP.
There is also an 'extension' to PHP, called PHP-GTK which provides GUI functions for the web interface. I've been reading about it, but have not yet experimented with it.
What I have noticed about PHP coders who do not know databases is that they think they have to write more than they really need to in PHP code, because they don't take good advantage of SQL functions. For instance, one fellow was bragging to me about the neat sorting routines he had just written and I just said Why? -- pass the order by clause to the database and let it do the sorting and return your records already sorted, just display them.... So keep that and other RBase techniques for handling data in mind as you help them, you can probably save them some amount of coding.
Good luck with your project.
==== Kim Melson WIT/Microsystems, Inc. 3900 Paseo del Sol, #322 Santa Fe, NM 87505 505-424-0417 505-780-2743 cell/voice mail http://www.witmicrosystems.com mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
