Re: Foxpro

Hmmm hi all,

Alright I've GOT to be blind (knowing me it's a good possibility)... but
I have a need to allow postgresql users to be able to change their own
password, but if they don't have access to the pg_shadow or update user
command how to I grant them this privilage and/or what command would
they run....?

Chris Bowlby,
-----------------------------------------------------
Web Developer @ Hub.org.
excalibur(at)hub(dot)org
www.hub.org
1-902-542-3657
-----------------------------------------------------

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http://archives.postgresql.org

> Hmmm hi all,
>
> Alright I've GOT to be blind (knowing me it's a good possibility)... but
> I have a need to allow postgresql users to be able to change their own
> password, but if they don't have access to the pg_shadow or update user
> command how to I grant them this privilage and/or what command would
> they run....?

$ psql -q template1
template1=# \h ALTER USER
Command: ALTER USER
Description: change a database user account
Syntax:
ALTER USER username [ [ WITH ] option [ ... ] ]

where option can be:

[ ENCRYPTED | UNENCRYPTED ] PASSWORD 'password'
| CREATEDB | NOCREATEDB
| CREATEUSER | NOCREATEUSER
| VALID UNTIL 'abstime'

--
Sean Chittenden

I have a wannabe programer that works for me and he my not for long, nagging
me that we should use FoxPro instead of PostgreSQL and Java.
I have tried and tried to explain this to him. I have tried to show him that
FoxPro is not mainstream anymore. He is a pain in my butt. Would anyone like
to point me to a comparison between FoxPro and PostgreSql. I can find
comparisons between DB-2 or Oracle or MySQL and Postgres but not FoxPro. I
can guess why. I hate being a dictator about things like and I have tried to
help him by saying he could do one little internal project in FoxPro but he
can not even get FoxPro to use ODBC to connect to Postgres. I do not care to
learn anymore about ODBC than what I need to hook Openoffice calc to my
database.

By the way this guy does not even know how to do a binary or to decode a BCD
date. When I asked if it FoxPro had a binary shift he told me it had lots of
keyboard funtions :(

-----Original Message-----
From: pgsql-general-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org
[mailto:pgsql-general-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org]On Behalf Of Sean Chittenden
Sent: Monday, March 04, 2002 11:17 PM
To: Chris Bowlby
Cc: pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: [ADMIN] [GENERAL] password change...

> Hmmm hi all,
>
> Alright I've GOT to be blind (knowing me it's a good possibility)... but
> I have a need to allow postgresql users to be able to change their own
> password, but if they don't have access to the pg_shadow or update user
> command how to I grant them this privilage and/or what command would
> they run....?

$ psql -q template1
template1=# \h ALTER USER
Command: ALTER USER
Description: change a database user account
Syntax:
ALTER USER username [ [ WITH ] option [ ... ] ]

where option can be:

[ ENCRYPTED | UNENCRYPTED ] PASSWORD 'password'
| CREATEDB | NOCREATEDB
| CREATEUSER | NOCREATEUSER
| VALID UNTIL 'abstime'

--
Sean Chittenden

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First, don't discount foxpro. it's not half bad. It's not Postgresql,
but it is a pretty nice little engine.

Here's what I'd do. Buy him Joel Celcko's SQL for Smarties.

Have him do as many examples as he can understand in both foxpro and
postgresql.

While postgresql seems to be able to do many of them, most other
semi-rdbms systems like mysql and foxpro quickly fall short.

As a plus, he might actually pick up some database theory while he's
reading it, and that wouldn't be all bad either :-)

At the same time he is learning why foxpro isn't probably the best choice

On Fri, 3 May 2002, David Siebert wrote:

> I have a wannabe programer that works for me and he my not for long, nagging
> me that we should use FoxPro instead of PostgreSQL and Java.
> I have tried and tried to explain this to him. I have tried to show him that
> FoxPro is not mainstream anymore. He is a pain in my butt. Would anyone like
> to point me to a comparison between FoxPro and PostgreSql. I can find
> comparisons between DB-2 or Oracle or MySQL and Postgres but not FoxPro. I
> can guess why. I hate being a dictator about things like and I have tried to
> help him by saying he could do one little internal project in FoxPro but he
> can not even get FoxPro to use ODBC to connect to Postgres. I do not care to
> learn anymore about ODBC than what I need to hook Openoffice calc to my
> database.
>
> By the way this guy does not even know how to do a binary or to decode a BCD
> date. When I asked if it FoxPro had a binary shift he told me it had lots of
> keyboard funtions :(
>

On Fri, May 03, 2002 at 12:33:11PM -0400, David Siebert wrote:

> I have a wannabe programer that works for me and he my not for long, nagging
> me that we should use FoxPro instead of PostgreSQL and Java.
> I have tried and tried to explain this to him. I have tried to show him that
> FoxPro is not mainstream anymore. He is a pain in my butt. Would anyone like
> to point me to a comparison between FoxPro and PostgreSql. I can find
> comparisons between DB-2 or Oracle or MySQL and Postgres but not FoxPro. I
> can guess why. I hate being a dictator about things like and I have tried to
> help him by saying he could do one little internal project in FoxPro but he
> can not even get FoxPro to use ODBC to connect to Postgres. I do not care to
> learn anymore about ODBC than what I need to hook Openoffice calc to my
> database.
>
> By the way this guy does not even know how to do a binary or to decode a BCD
> date. When I asked if it FoxPro had a binary shift he told me it had lots of
> keyboard funtions :(

I used to do FoxPro, up to the point where it went Visual FoxPro. It's
not even comparable to engines like DB2, PostgreSQL, Sybase, Informix
and Oracle. It's simply not in the same league at all. Never was
intented to be. It is useful for some things, and it even has a SQL
interface of sorts. But it ain't PostgreSQL.

You're also right about FoxPro and the mainstream. Microsoft bought
FoxPro many years ago, and they've done little to really improve it.
Instead, they came up with Access and SQL Server. It's not one of their
favorite products. The main reason they keep it around is that there are
a lot of companies which have software written in it, and they can
continue to make some money off upgrades. I'm surprised it's lasted this
long.

I'd say this. If you're the boss, you get to make the rules. If
employees don't like it, tell 'em to hit the road. I hate to sound
mean-spirited, but I was an employee for many years, and now I run my
own business. I give employees their say, and I take their concerns into
account, but in the end, it's my company and my decision.

Paul

Yea I know I am the boss and I did make the rule. This person is a good
support tech and fancies himself a programer. I am trying to get him to
understand without saying "Because I said so" He is just so sure that he
right and all the other programers here don't know what they are talking
about. Oh well you have to admit that it is a nice change to see the
management of a company telling a wannabe programer "No you will not use
Microsofts program. You will use this opensource server instead."
-----Original Message-----
From: pgsql-general-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org
[mailto:pgsql-general-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org]On Behalf Of Paul M Foster
Sent: Friday, May 03, 2002 4:09 PM
To: pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Foxpro

On Fri, May 03, 2002 at 12:33:11PM -0400, David Siebert wrote:

> I have a wannabe programer that works for me and he my not for long,
nagging
> me that we should use FoxPro instead of PostgreSQL and Java.
> I have tried and tried to explain this to him. I have tried to show him
that
> FoxPro is not mainstream anymore. He is a pain in my butt. Would anyone
like
> to point me to a comparison between FoxPro and PostgreSql. I can find
> comparisons between DB-2 or Oracle or MySQL and Postgres but not FoxPro. I
> can guess why. I hate being a dictator about things like and I have tried
to
> help him by saying he could do one little internal project in FoxPro but
he
> can not even get FoxPro to use ODBC to connect to Postgres. I do not care
to
> learn anymore about ODBC than what I need to hook Openoffice calc to my
> database.
>
> By the way this guy does not even know how to do a binary or to decode a
BCD
> date. When I asked if it FoxPro had a binary shift he told me it had lots
of
> keyboard funtions :(

I used to do FoxPro, up to the point where it went Visual FoxPro. It's
not even comparable to engines like DB2, PostgreSQL, Sybase, Informix
and Oracle. It's simply not in the same league at all. Never was
intented to be. It is useful for some things, and it even has a SQL
interface of sorts. But it ain't PostgreSQL.

You're also right about FoxPro and the mainstream. Microsoft bought
FoxPro many years ago, and they've done little to really improve it.
Instead, they came up with Access and SQL Server. It's not one of their
favorite products. The main reason they keep it around is that there are
a lot of companies which have software written in it, and they can
continue to make some money off upgrades. I'm surprised it's lasted this
long.

I'd say this. If you're the boss, you get to make the rules. If
employees don't like it, tell 'em to hit the road. I hate to sound
mean-spirited, but I was an employee for many years, and now I run my
own business. I give employees their say, and I take their concerns into
account, but in the end, it's my company and my decision.

Paul

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David Siebert wrote:

>Yea I know I am the boss and I did make the rule. This person is a good
>support tech and fancies himself a programer. I am trying to get him to
>understand without saying "Because I said so" He is just so sure that he
>right and all the other programers here don't know what they are talking
>about. Oh well you have to admit that it is a nice change to see the
>management of a company telling a wannabe programer "No you will not use
>Microsofts program. You will use this opensource server instead."
>-----Original Message-----
>
Foxpro is a successor of the old DBase series. It uses the file
structure from DBase and Clipper. This was a fine format, however, it
was designed with a different era, and different uses in mind. The
format best fits single user systems. The relationships are not binding
in the same way, and the metadata is not nearly as integrated. It did
not support transactions the last I worked with it. It was designed for
putting all of the data in one table, and the relational part was bolted
on later, and not all that cleanly. The relation function is klunky at
best to work with.

As for the Foxpro language, which is VERY similar to Clipper (or at
least was in version 2.6) has a very dificult time supporting one to
many joins, a fundamental part of normalized relational data. Whatever
you do, don't try to understand what it is doing in the case loops it
generates for event handling, you will hurt your head. This makes the
code unmanageable and unmaintainable.

Foxpro tries to be everything. It is a gui designer, an application
language, and a database backend all in one package. This can be nice
for a small project, but as soon as it grows, and live backups and
multiple concurrent users become an issue, it falls down.

PostgreSQL is, on the other hand, just the data backend, but rather than
being simply a file like Foxpro or Access, it is a service running in a
central place to allow concurrent requests, and resolve conflicts. You
will still need something else to generate the front end interface and
most of the logic. Since this is a newbie, I highly reccomend PHP. It
is easy, graphical, and gets results very quickly. It can quickly give
a sense of accomplishment, while still being strong enough to develop
real applications with later. Then he can learn Java, and start the
other applications. Just imagine the joy of being able to program in
any one of MANY languages, by MANY users, and get the SAME data from the
SAME source at the SAME TIME.

Hi David,

Grant is taking the right approach here.

Maybe try the tact of "it's better for his future to learn REAL SQL, on
a REAL concurrent multi-user database". Database servers have a good
long future in front of them unless something weird and radical
happens. Foxpro on the other hand doesn't have the same kind of future
beckoning to it.

His learning to do it in a non-Foxpro way (aka PostgreSQL) will be
beneficial for him.

Of course, that is if you want to let him take the time to learn
PostgreSQL that is. :-)

If not, there's a Jobs page on the techdocs.postgresql.org site where
the specs can be put for the kind of person you're after.

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift

Grant Johnson wrote:
>
> David Siebert wrote:
>
> >Yea I know I am the boss and I did make the rule. This person is a good
> >support tech and fancies himself a programer. I am trying to get him to
> >understand without saying "Because I said so" He is just so sure that he
> >right and all the other programers here don't know what they are talking
> >about. Oh well you have to admit that it is a nice change to see the
> >management of a company telling a wannabe programer "No you will not use
> >Microsofts program. You will use this opensource server instead."
> >-----Original Message-----
> >
> Foxpro is a successor of the old DBase series. It uses the file
> structure from DBase and Clipper. This was a fine format, however, it
> was designed with a different era, and different uses in mind. The
> format best fits single user systems. The relationships are not binding
> in the same way, and the metadata is not nearly as integrated. It did
> not support transactions the last I worked with it. It was designed for
> putting all of the data in one table, and the relational part was bolted
> on later, and not all that cleanly. The relation function is klunky at
> best to work with.
>
> As for the Foxpro language, which is VERY similar to Clipper (or at
> least was in version 2.6) has a very dificult time supporting one to
> many joins, a fundamental part of normalized relational data. Whatever
> you do, don't try to understand what it is doing in the case loops it
> generates for event handling, you will hurt your head. This makes the
> code unmanageable and unmaintainable.
>
> Foxpro tries to be everything. It is a gui designer, an application
> language, and a database backend all in one package. This can be nice
> for a small project, but as soon as it grows, and live backups and
> multiple concurrent users become an issue, it falls down.
>
> PostgreSQL is, on the other hand, just the data backend, but rather than
> being simply a file like Foxpro or Access, it is a service running in a
> central place to allow concurrent requests, and resolve conflicts. You
> will still need something else to generate the front end interface and
> most of the logic. Since this is a newbie, I highly reccomend PHP. It
> is easy, graphical, and gets results very quickly. It can quickly give
> a sense of accomplishment, while still being strong enough to develop
> real applications with later. Then he can learn Java, and start the
> other applications. Just imagine the joy of being able to program in
> any one of MANY languages, by MANY users, and get the SAME data from the
> SAME source at the SAME TIME.
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to majordomo(at)postgresql(dot)org

--
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
- Indira Gandhi

David Siebert wrote:
>
> I have a wannabe programer that works for me and he my not for long, nagging
> me that we should use FoxPro instead of PostgreSQL and Java.
> I have tried and tried to explain this to him. I have tried to show him that
> FoxPro is not mainstream anymore. He is a pain in my butt. Would anyone like
> to point me to a comparison between FoxPro and PostgreSql. I can find
> comparisons between DB-2 or Oracle or MySQL and Postgres but not FoxPro. I
> can guess why. I hate being a dictator about things like and I have tried to
> help him by saying he could do one little internal project in FoxPro but he
> can not even get FoxPro to use ODBC to connect to Postgres. I do not care to
> learn anymore about ODBC than what I need to hook Openoffice calc to my
> database.
>
> By the way this guy does not even know how to do a binary or to decode a BCD
> date. When I asked if it FoxPro had a binary shift he told me it had lots of
> keyboard funtions :(
>

I used FoxPro and Clipper between 1990 and 1994. They where both nice
tools for their time, and FoxPro's file and index format was the most
powerful of all xBase dialects.
Another thing that was very powerful in FoxPro was the fact that you
could embed SQL statements into your programs, like embedded SQL ala
COBOL. It supported INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE and SELECT statements and you
could move your result into a cursor, so as a programmer you did not
have to worry where your results went. These features made powerful
joins possible so I used them a lot, and learnt a whole lot along the
way about SQL data statements. I wrote a kind of defect tracking system
with it for rolling stock (yes, talking about railroads here), which
supported 11 users over a Novell network and this ran rather well
looking at the hardware we then had (all 386sx/33 MHz systems, server
386/33 Mhz w/ SCSI, over a 10 Mbit Ethernet). I know from the
documentation that if you had Btrieve, then you could do real
transactioning on the file server. One did not have to do much about
providing software to the workstations either, if you started programs
from the server drive, it created a local cache where it put the
run-times and the compiled programs.

Between 1995 and 1997 I was in factory automation, and then between 1997
and 2000 I was back in multi-user database systems using more powerful
hardware and software, first WANG PACE and Cobol, later ORACLE on HP/UX.

The most important thing that I hated on FoxPro was that I did not have
ways to nicely keep track of relationships, and that there was not a way
to bind code to tables (what I would find out later where called
triggers). So, FoxPro has nice things, and one can be very proficient
and even efficient with it, but it does really miss some features which
are to be found in really professional databases (and which were used in
WANG PACE and ORACLE) :
- Maintenance and checking of relationship integrity
- Triggers
- Real transactioning
- Scalability

Looking back, one can see that indeed all xBase has descended from
personal computers and that multi-user abilities mostly have been tacked
on based on the underlying OS, while for systems like DB2, Oracle, WANG
PACE and of course postgreSQL, multi-user was in the design from the
beginning. It gives me a different sense when I think about both. What
not many people seem to know however, was that FoxPro's predecessor,
FoxBase was also available on Unix platforms. This development would of
course have been stopped by MS when it bought FoxPro and its mother
company.

Emotional aside : as far as 1994, I found the then chief of FoxPro a
traitor for selling his company to MS. For someone who had shown to be
able to create and market a successful product, I do not think he had
valid reasons to take this step. It did not bring us customers benefits,
because when we upgraded to FoxPro 2.6, I did not see much difference
and all marketing stopped after MS took over.

Jurgen Defurne
LinuxIdee

How about:

"Here take this pink slip and Foxpro and go and waste someone elses
time"

Cheers

Tony

--
RedHat Linux on Sony Vaio C1XD/S
http://www.animaproductions.com/linux2.html
Macromedia UltraDev with PostgreSQL
http://www.animaproductions.com/ultra.html

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Mercer" <jim(at)reptiles(dot)org>
To: "Ian Harding" <ianh(at)tpchd(dot)org>
Cc: <david(at)eclipsecat(dot)com>; <pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Sent: Friday, May 03, 2002 8:08 PM
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Foxpro

> On Fri, May 03, 2002 at 10:41:09AM -0700, Ian Harding wrote:
> > At the most basic level, PostgreSQL is a client - server product, FoxPro
is not.

FoxPro is not a DB server but it can be DB client.

> > By the way this guy does not even know how to do a binary or to decode a
BCD
> > date. When I asked if it FoxPro had a binary shift he told me it had
lots of
> > keyboard funtions :(

It is true that FoxPro does not have any of the *low functions (handling
pointers, addresses, cast etc.) but it does have powerful functions to deal
with records and record sets. Some functions can be written in "C" and
imported into FoxPro if you really need that. It can be really god client.
As a server there is not dillema: FoxPro is not as DB sever at all.
It is true that you can have some kind or referential integrity and
triggers, but it works very bad (on my opinion).
I was also scared of learning PostgreSQL, but it is worth learning.

So you both might be right:

1. Make the database in PostgreSQL
2. Make the ODBC connection to that database
3. From FoxPro make the remote views that points to that database and
continue
to write client in FoxPro.

Of course, this concept have dark sides too:

1 FoxPro is running on windows only.
2 You need to buy FoxPro.
3 Foxpro is interpreter, not compliler so You going to need really
fast processor.
4 FoxPro is not wery stable application crashes wery often

The real question is: What are you trying to do :

1. Make the application running because dead line is closer every day:
Try to use postgres as DB server, FoxPro as client an you will
have results very soon
because both of you can work with the tool you know well.

2. Trying to select strategies for future projects:
Use Java, TCL, C++ with QT for example , or some other
that fits your needs and Forget FoxPro !

All of theese come from my expirience, of course someone else can think in
different way.

Best regards !