RE: Some advice need after a 20 year gap after Ingres/GUIs
I had a few responses to my request for advice posted on 10 April, for which it is time that I registered my many thanks. It seems that I am now well sorted with a solution, parts of which I was able to test very quickly, and now it is time to build a project structure. The Youtube offerings were very helpful and there are plenty of code sections 'out there' which I have found are a good basis for some of the things I need to do. So, Windows 11 Pro on a 32GB machine, stand-alone for now, with Postgres, PGAdmin-4, TKinter and the embedded IDLE text editor. (OK - IDLE is free!, some of the better ones are not) Again, thank you. John Additional resources: Python Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWRfhZUzrAc=PLWKjhJtqVAbnqBxcdjVGgT3uVR10bzTEB Python & Tkinter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQSEXcf6s2I=PLCC34OHNcOtoC6GglhF3ncJ5rLwQrLGnV Python & Postgres: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miEFm1CyjfM Greetings and luck! El 10/04/2024 a las 06:11, John Bateson escribió: Good morning, The end of my working life was taken up with developing and supporting a Scientific Research establishment near Warrington in the UK. I had a small team of programmer who did an excellent job for me and with me. The software was Ingres and the main program supporting user administration on a Synchrotron was built under OpenROAD with other developments around the on-site stores and finance using ABF since the stores workers found this much faster than a GUI! There was also some web development use .Net practises. This was a quite complex system in the end with nearly 200 tables. We ended up using Ingres Replicator with the intention of running it from two sites 180 miles apart - at the time it was a pile of notquitegoodenough! This was early this century so Actian may have made some improvements since then... So much for the background to establish that I am not a complete newbie, just out of the loop for a while. Using Postgres and PGAdmin -4. So, 20 years later I am developing, (unpaid) a new project for some historic railways in the UK and linking these to the development and design of a range of kits for those interested in model railways. This is getting towards 20 tables so far. What I really need is a recommendation for the current and best practice for an easy GUI that will allow me to press a button without opening up PGAdmin or a black screen, i.e. the traditional .EXE file I can put on a button on the screen on the screen on a Windows 11 based system. While my programming history goes back to MDBS-4 and beyond I know I have some catching up to do and while not a complete newbie, need something I can work on quickly and intuitively and inexpensively! So, recommendation and possibly some consensus would be very much appreciated. And apologies if I have taken up too much of your time or have placed this in the wrong forum. John
Re: Some advice need after a 20 year gap after Ingres/GUIs
On 4/10/24 03:11, John Bateson wrote: Good morning, The end of my working life was taken up with developing and supporting a Scientific Research establishment near Warrington in the UK. I had a small team of programmer who did an excellent job for me and with me. The software was Ingres and the main program supporting user administration on a Synchrotron was built under OpenROAD with other developments around the on-site stores and finance using ABF since the stores workers found this much faster than a GUI! There was also some web development use .Net practises. This was a quite complex system in the end with nearly 200 tables. We ended up using Ingres Replicator with the intention of running it from two sites 180 miles apart – at the time it was a pile of *notquitegoodenough*! This was early this century so Actian may have made some improvements since then… So much for the background to establish that I am not a complete newbie, just out of the loop for a while. *Using Postgres and PGAdmin -4*. So, 20 years later I am developing, (unpaid) a new project for some historic railways in the UK and linking these to the development and design of a range of kits for those interested in model railways. This is getting towards 20 tables so far. What I really need is a recommendation for the current and best practice for an easy GUI that will allow me to press a button without opening up PGAdmin or a black screen, i.e. the traditional .EXE file I can put on a button on the screen on the screen on a Windows 11 based system. With Postgres or other similar client-server database there will be a need to set up the database server somewhere first, before you get to the GUI interface part. Are you planning on a single instance of Postgres that folks log in to from multiple locations? Or do want a stand alone setup that each user has on their machine? While my programming history goes back to MDBS-4 and beyond I know I have some catching up to do and while not a complete newbie, need something I can work on quickly and intuitively and inexpensively! So, recommendation and possibly some consensus would be very much appreciated. And apologies if I have taken up too much of your time or have placed this in the wrong forum. John -- Adrian Klaver adrian.kla...@aklaver.com
Re: Some advice need after a 20 year gap after Ingres/GUIs
On Wed, Apr 10, 2024 at 12:11 PM John Bateson wrote: > *Using Postgres and PGAdmin -4*. > > [...]. This is getting towards 20 tables so far. > > [...] i.e. the traditional .EXE file I can put on a button on the screen > on a Windows 11 based system. > John, Are you aware of SQLite or DuckDB? Unlike PostgreSQL, which is an (excellent) client-server RDBMS, the former two are "embedded" disk-based databases, which are quite capable. "Deployment" is trivial. And their SQL engine are more sophisticated than most people realize. Not that I want to turn you away from PostgreSQL, but they do have advantages, FWIW. Having DBs be a single file on disk easily shared is quite convenient. The reason I mention it here, is that SQLite for example has tons of ready-made GUIs, with some of the Windows one being just 1 .exe indeed. Most allow to view the tables in "Grid UI controls", some allow modifications too. They are not MS Access like, in the sense that they don't allow writing custom UIs on top of the DB, just view and edit DB tables. But maybe that's enough for your hobby project? My $0.02. --DD
Re: Some advice need after a 20 year gap after Ingres/GUIs
Hi, To start I had to find out what MDBS IV is, since it caught my attention and I ended up learning a few things about the history of databases ;-). Regarding your concern: First you must be clear that there are many alternatives to develop graphical interfaces to work with Postgres. So, first of all: * You must choose and master a programming language that you feel comfortable with, Python is the one that most developers choose. * Use a development environment suitable for the language you have chosen, there are several, but the best known is possibly Visual Studio Code. * Choose which operating system you are going to develop with: Windows, Linux, macOS, generally most people choose Windows since you can integrate a Linux like Ubuntu using WSL. * After you master your favorite programming language, you must select a framework that allows you to generate a graphical interface, in Python there are several such as Tkinter, wxPython or Qt among others. * If the development is via the web, the options are many, the best known in Python would be Django for the web and FastAPI for the development of APIs via REST * You must also have a library that allows you to connect with Postgres, in Python there is pyODBC, psycopg2 among others. Additional resources: Python Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWRfhZUzrAc=PLWKjhJtqVAbnqBxcdjVGgT3uVR10bzTEB Python & Tkinter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQSEXcf6s2I=PLCC34OHNcOtoC6GglhF3ncJ5rLwQrLGnV Python & Postgres: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miEFm1CyjfM Greetings and luck! El 10/04/2024 a las 06:11, John Bateson escribió: Good morning, The end of my working life was taken up with developing and supporting a Scientific Research establishment near Warrington in the UK. I had a small team of programmer who did an excellent job for me and with me. The software was Ingres and the main program supporting user administration on a Synchrotron was built under OpenROAD with other developments around the on-site stores and finance using ABF since the stores workers found this much faster than a GUI! There was also some web development use .Net practises. This was a quite complex system in the end with nearly 200 tables. We ended up using Ingres Replicator with the intention of running it from two sites 180 miles apart – at the time it was a pile of *notquitegoodenough*! This was early this century so Actian may have made some improvements since then… So much for the background to establish that I am not a complete newbie, just out of the loop for a while. *Using Postgres and PGAdmin -4*. So, 20 years later I am developing, (unpaid) a new project for some historic railways in the UK and linking these to the development and design of a range of kits for those interested in model railways. This is getting towards 20 tables so far. What I really need is a recommendation for the current and best practice for an easy GUI that will allow me to press a button without opening up PGAdmin or a black screen, i.e. the traditional .EXE file I can put on a button on the screen on the screen on a Windows 11 based system. While my programming history goes back to MDBS-4 and beyond I know I have some catching up to do and while not a complete newbie, need something I can work on quickly and intuitively and inexpensively! So, recommendation and possibly some consensus would be very much appreciated. And apologies if I have taken up too much of your time or have placed this in the wrong forum. John -- Saludos, Francisco Prado
Some advice need after a 20 year gap after Ingres/GUIs
Good morning, The end of my working life was taken up with developing and supporting a Scientific Research establishment near Warrington in the UK. I had a small team of programmer who did an excellent job for me and with me. The software was Ingres and the main program supporting user administration on a Synchrotron was built under OpenROAD with other developments around the on-site stores and finance using ABF since the stores workers found this much faster than a GUI! There was also some web development use .Net practises. This was a quite complex system in the end with nearly 200 tables. We ended up using Ingres Replicator with the intention of running it from two sites 180 miles apart - at the time it was a pile of notquitegoodenough! This was early this century so Actian may have made some improvements since then... So much for the background to establish that I am not a complete newbie, just out of the loop for a while. Using Postgres and PGAdmin -4. So, 20 years later I am developing, (unpaid) a new project for some historic railways in the UK and linking these to the development and design of a range of kits for those interested in model railways. This is getting towards 20 tables so far. What I really need is a recommendation for the current and best practice for an easy GUI that will allow me to press a button without opening up PGAdmin or a black screen, i.e. the traditional .EXE file I can put on a button on the screen on the screen on a Windows 11 based system. While my programming history goes back to MDBS-4 and beyond I know I have some catching up to do and while not a complete newbie, need something I can work on quickly and intuitively and inexpensively! So, recommendation and possibly some consensus would be very much appreciated. And apologies if I have taken up too much of your time or have placed this in the wrong forum. John
