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servo · Jul 9, 2004, 01:18 PM

I have just been put on a project and I am not sure where to go with it. At my place of work we have a system set up that takes care of many interconnected processes, like billing, purchases orders, etc. We are a public institution our setup is not exactly standard. Hence, I cannot really fin a commercial app that would help us.
Right now everything is handled through an old FileMaker 4 system and a bunch of C and Perl apps on our Unix server. It is a hodge podge system that was first started 20 years ago and just built on over the years.

I have been tasked with coming up wit an update plan. My background is in web development and my first thought was to create a browser interface for all these processes. We are however a Mac shop so I am wondering if creating a Cocoa app may be a direction I should look into.

If I were to convert this into a web application it would be a PHP/MySQL project. I'm literally just beginning to learn Cocoa. Is this something I can tackle with Cocoa?

hayesk · Jul 9, 2004, 02:00 PM

If you have programmed before, it can be done, but a database system is probably easier and less time-consuming.

Do you have a budget? Have you thought about just updating to FileMaker 7?

servo · Jul 9, 2004, 02:17 PM

Originally posted by hayesk:
If you have programmed before, it can be done, but a database system is probably easier and less time-consuming.

Do you have a budget? Have you thought about just updating to FileMaker 7?

I've been programming for a decade, I actually am a recent Mac switcher though. So I am new to the Mac programming world.
No budget to speak of. In a good way though. I need something I just order it. I have considered upgrading FileMaker but to be honest I really do not like it. I know FileMaker 7 is supposed to be great but I have not been impressed with what I have seen.

hayesk · Jul 9, 2004, 02:50 PM

You may want to look at Servoy then. It uses Java, and connects to SQL backends.

sambeau · Jul 9, 2004, 03:06 PM

Have a look at Webobjects + an SQL database..

itai195 · 03:34 PM

Originally posted by sambeau:
Have a look at Webobjects + an SQL database..

Ditto. Sounds like a small shop, so a solution like that might be sufficient. WebObjects is also quite affordable, and if you know Java you'll have a leg up over learning ObjC + Cocoa... you also gain the platform independence of a web based app, but still get a very Mac-oriented development environment. And if you want to learn Cocoa, WebObjects can be kind of a nice lead-in, because some of the APIs (eg collections, key-value coding) are similar and both use the same IDE. Don't go with PHP/MySQL though, you'll want something a bit more robust than that for this kind of system, IMO.

Thinine · Jul 10, 2004, 09:14 PM

Originally posted by servo:
If I were to convert this into a web application it would be a PHP/MySQL project. I'm literally just beginning to learn Cocoa. Is this something I can tackle with Cocoa?

Well, after you develop the PHP/MySQL part, I think it would be possible to create a small Cocoa app to interface with the web portion. Essentially, you would communicate with the server like the app was a web browser and then parse the data that came back. Shouldn't be too difficult, though I don't really know.