Subject The programs we make with dBASE From Juan Pedro <noemail@no-dominio.es> Date Sat, 15 Apr 2023 19:44:56 -0400 Newsgroups dbase.getting-started Paul has asked for input on programs written with dBASE. Here is ours, first of all apologies because the translation is from Google. Our company developed with Clipper in the DOS era When the first 16-bit Visual dBASE appeared, we chose it as the development tool for Windows 95, the version at the time when we started creating programs in Windows. Since then we have deployed more than 80 different desktop applications that cover the most diverse areas: General and sectoral Management and Billing Programs. Programs for patient management in the hospital environment and that publish reports on the hospital intranet. Desktop programs that interact seamlessly with Web Services developed in PHP and that cover many different aspects. From mobile data collection that receives and sends information to dBASE programs to online stores, powered by desktop programs, to which you send sales data, reservations... Programs whose capabilities can be extended or customized at runtime with a plugin system for which we develop, written in dBASE, a small source code interpreter with basic flow control structures and that the DEO system allows almost infinite development. . We have created an expert, written in dBASE and based on templates, which in just 10 minutes allows you to deploy a fully operational application, with our built-in framework, and ready for the incorporation of functionalities. The list, in almost 30 years of development on Windows, is very long. In the interconnected world, dBASE allows us to combine the power of the desktop with Internet connectivity. What we like about the language is that being simple, flexible and elegant allows really complex developments. Not everything will be good things and obviously there are some that we do not like. We do not like the lack of clarity and roadmap on the part of the company that owns dBASE. What's more, it seems to us a lack of respect towards all of us who develop with dBASE. We don't like that we are missing native pieces of the language, basic at the moment, like for example that for web services we have to use MSXML instead of having a native object or that we don't have native objects for reading xml. We don't like that the project manager is oriented to the type of file instead of a distribution of the project in folders. We have welcomed the implementation of Scintilla in the editor, which has made basic things possible, such as autocompletion, but which has several problems for us, among which we can highlight. It is responsible for many of the IDE crashes. It should respect the case of variable names. It is true that the language does not differentiate case in the names of the variables but if we wrote myVariable we would not have to try to change it to MYVARIABLE or myVARIABLE... It should be possible to include other folders in the projects so that the editor could index functions, classes and methods to offer them in the autocompletion. For those of us who have a basic framework, developed by us, the previous request is essential... Many BDE, UTF-8 issues remain pending... but with what has been said I think it has become clear that we are committed to dBASE as a development tool. Finally, a request. Please tell us about the future plans for dBASE that the company has, we are not children, we have the capacity to understand almost everything and knowing where we are going we can make more contributions and get more involved.