Re: Mildly OT: dBASE IV

David Cressey wrote:
"Frank Hamersley" <terabitemightbe@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
Kenneth Downs wrote:
Marshall wrote:

[..]

My poison was Clipper Summer 87 and then 5.01 from Nantucket (the 2 gold
releases). When Foxpro came out it was seen more as a clone of the
dBase user environment while Clipper was a *woo hoo* compiler (well sort
of)! I ended up using Foxpro on SCO for an app that lasted for 15 years
before it was retired. It was fast and quite reliable.

When M$ bought FoxPro and Nantucket went off with VO - soon followed by
CA slurping Nantucket up, the future was writ large on the wall.

About then I suspended my coding activities and became a dreaded
consultant and then even worse, a project manager!
[..]

Your CV makes interesting reading.

As it happens I have rarely coded the various systems I have been associated with in any given language more than once.

Jack of all Trades - yes, master of none, not IMO. Fortunately I have always managed to out skill the other team members even if I have never "seen" it before.

My trajectory was somewhat different.

I had been programming for some 20 years, as a student, in on campus summer
jobs, or as a professional, when I got exposed to the data centric world
view. It changed my thinking.

My epiphany re databases was seeing dbase II on a mates Osbourne in Adelaide round about 1980 or 81 as I recall. Didn't get to use it for many years later until the Foxpro job in 1988. Thereafter I did a major Clipper and a few minor Clipper projects before moving to Access (blech!) and then consulting SQL Server and Sybase ASE. Never tangled with DB@ or Oracle.

During my 20 as a programmer, I had learned along the way, such things as
interactive debugging (using a tool called DDT on the PDP-1 in 1962-63),
structured programming (largely self taught, although I did eventually
read some books on the subject), and languages ranging from assembler to
lisp to Algol and Pascal.

The glory days of hacking OS's - *nix is nothing new (under the sun).

My switchover to data centric thinking was occasioned by a confluence of
factors: a change of jobs, where my mission was to support a boss that was
interested in using data for decision making, rather than in technology for
its own sake. A change of mentors: a colleague of mine, a database
instructor named Bob Ellis, exposed me to the relational model, albeit in
very low level form. A change of platform, from the DECsystem-10 where I
knew the operating system internals, to the VAX, where I didn't even know
the command language. And a change from 3GLs to Datatrieve, a funny little
language that allowed you to do remarkably sophisticated things with data
without engaging in a lot of esoteric programming.

dBase (et al) had only the 10 work areas and the "SET RELATION" command with which to link the tables together. This limitation much more than Access stimulated the practice of relational purity to me even though every interaction was in essence cursor oriented.

By the time Datatrieve's limitations got to be too much for me, DEC had
released internal copies of DEC Rdb. DEC Rdb comprised Rdb/VMS, which got
sold to Oracle in 1994. It also comprised Rdb/ELN, which was actually
available internally before Rdb/VMS. Rdb/ELN eventually stimulated the
building of Interbase... Firebird.

I never got involved in Foxpro or Clipper or DBASE, except as a hobby.
Eventually, I started using MS Access for some data management tasks that
were NOT part of my deliverables, just because it was so easy and so
ubiquitous.

I never found Access "easy" to produce a truly professional outcome (by my own standards).

For me, even Oracle RDBMS was a step down from DEC Rdb, as a DBMS.
However, as a programming environment, Oracle was a step up from Rdb.

For the next 15 years or so, I spent helping people with Rdb and/or Oracle
databases get more bang for the buck. Perhaps that's why my experience is
so contrary to what Dawn recounts.

As is most peoples. I don't discount that Dawn hasn't built workable solutions using Pick but that doesn't say anything about the RM. I have built major gizmos using Excel but that says nothing about the RM either.

Cheers, Frank.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Mildly OT: dBASE IV
    ... I was interested to see item #5: dBASE IV. ... That product by the way was Foxpro. ... I had been programming for some 20 years, as a student, in on campus summer ... released internal copies of DEC Rdb. ...
    (comp.databases.theory)
  • Re: Mildly OT: dBASE IV
    ... I ended up using Foxpro on SCO for an app that lasted for 15 years ... a camp, some colleagues learned DBase. ... Clipper 5.01 ones also. ...
    (comp.databases.theory)
  • Re: Programming problem.......basic pseudocode / arrays
    ... >xBASE languages. ... dBASE, Clipper, FoxPro, et al are somewhat higher ...
    (comp.programming)
  • Re: Mildly OT: dBASE IV
    ... dBase user environment while Clipper was a *woo hoo* compiler (well sort ... I ended up using Foxpro on SCO for an app that lasted for 15 years ... a camp, some colleagues learned DBase. ... Clipper 5.01 ones also. ...
    (comp.databases.theory)
  • Re: VFP not listed on Microsoft Surveys. Are we Developers?
    ... God save dBase, Foxpro, Clipper, ... ...
    (microsoft.public.fox.programmer.exchange)
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