Thread

1. progmetaldev · 1790115104 · focus · HN ↗

   I worked with a physician's office in 2006, and the lead physician had cobbled together a system for patient tracking using Visual FoxPro. It was a monstrosity, and using it over a network drive gave all sorts of file locks and issues with multiple people changing the same record (usually the physician and front of house staff when checking the patient out).

   I finally got the physician to switch to a proper client/server architecture using .NET WinForms and ASP.NET RPC calls. All issues went away, and I was even able to allow staff members to edit the interface to set what mattered to them most at the top of the application, by building the lab testing form in XML so they could move the X/Y coordinates to where they wanted them. It wasn't even a feature I had thought of, just a physician looking through the technology and figuring out how it worked (luckily the business and security logic were on the server, so a bad actor could only have destroyed their own local copy of the app).

   1. ASalazarMX · 1790116672 · focus · HN ↗

      DBase/Fox Pro were born when local networks weren't common, it excelled as a single-user batteries-included IDE. Now that you mention this, I understand why it couldn't work these days as it is.

      I also think it won't be that hard to make it multiuser, that's a long-ago solved problem these days.

      1. mikestew · 1790117529 · focus · HN ↗

         It wasn’t that hard to make it multiuser back on the day, either. But as OP discovered, FoxPro also made it very easy to write shit multiuser code. Pessimistic/optimistic locking, etc.? It was in there, but you had to use it.

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