[CS-FSLUG] Mac vs Linux business software question

[Frank Bax]

You'll need to check with vendor to see if thier software can be 
modified.  I said you can develop add-on's or extensions (I'm thinking 
separate executable here), changing existing code is something else; which 
may or may not be possible.

Frank


At 01:10 AM 5/4/05, R. Thompson wrote:

>Thanks Frank,
>
>     your input has been very helpful!  Since reading your e-mail I've
>checked the filemaker website.  I'm encouraged by what I've seen so far,
>especially if being able to modify or customize some of the software is
>within my range of abilities.
>
>           Ron T.
>
>On Tue, 2005-05-03 at 13:02, Frank Bax wrote:
> > At 02:20 PM 5/3/05, R. Thompson wrote:
> > >      I'm back at it, looking at business software.  An interesting
> > >product I've found is Mac based:
> > >http://www.posdirect.com/proddetail.php?prod=SKFMP&PHPSESSID=717f604662 
> e0e4c392481908f9d3adeb
> > >I've spoken to the sales people and they tell me that it may be edited
> > >using Filemaker 6 (a product I'm not familiar with).
> > >It seems that Mac OS X is well spoken of on this list, and I have not
> > >yet found affordable similar software for Linux.  Are there are opinions
> > >on whether to use Mac software for this application?  What is Filemaker
> > >6?  Is there an affordable similar Linux based product?
> >
> >
> > In the days (1980's) before SQL database servers were available for 
> desktop
> > machines, there were products like DOS-based programs like dBase and
> > FileMaker.  These products were both a database engine and a development
> > "language" - all in one package.  Basically the vendor is saying that 
> their
> > product was developed with the FileMaker 6 "language" and data is 
> stored in
> > FileMake (proprietary format) files.  If you purchase FileMaker 6 
> yourself,
> > you could then access the database directly (even though its in a
> > proprietary format).  This would allow you to "add-on" custom 
> extensions to
> > the software, or access the files directly if existing reports are not
> > flexible enough.
> >
> > In contrast to FileMaker, the file formats used by the dBase product were
> > freely available (or were they reverse engineered?), so lots of tools 
> (both
> > free and commercial) were developed to read/write those files (now called
> > XBase) on various platforms.  I have sometimes come across copies of
> > FileMaker, but never ventured so far as to actually use it myself.  I did
> > several years of software development using one of the XBase tools.
> >
> > Sorry, but I'm not aware of any low-cost small-business packages; although
> > I vaguely remember reading about some early FOSS attempts about 5 years 
> ago.
> >
> > Frank
> >
> >
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>--
>Ron G. Thompson, |^|
>Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Canada
>www.petomai.org  ron at petomai.org
>"Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as doves to their window?" Is
>60:8
>
>
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