# What should I use in place of FoxPro Unix?



## michaelrmgreen (Jul 29, 2010)

I've been using MS FoxPro Unix since 1993 (and before that FoxBase+). Originally on SCO Xenix (with 4 MB ram!) with serial terminals, now under FreeBSD and users on PC using telnet (using the excellent PuttyTel).

I'd like to change to something more modern, which can handle display of radiographs on the PCs. I'd also like to move away from Windows as desktops.

Ideally something simple, I'm only developing for myself. Ideas please.


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## wblock@ (Jul 29, 2010)

There's Dabo.  It didn't really look like a replacement to me.

A web framework would be a natural, but I couldn't find anything like Foxpro.  Rails with ActiveScaffold and Javascript user-side data validation code was the closest I could find, but it would still mean doing things very differently.

(Rant: why don't web developers see the advantage in validating input both before *and* after submission?  Why does that fancy web site let me enter letters where only digits are allowed?  And why don't the frameworks use field definitions that can be used for validation automatically?  It's shoddy to accept bad input and then complain about it.)


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## SirDice (Jul 30, 2010)

wblock said:
			
		

> (Rant: why don't web developers see the advantage in validating input both before *and* after submission?  Why does that fancy web site let me enter letters where only digits are allowed?  And why don't the frameworks use field definitions that can be used for validation automatically?  It's shoddy to accept bad input and then complain about it.)


Because most web developers are completely ignorant about security. From a security standpoint it's better to validate the input after submission. Never, ever trust anything a client sends you. Client-side input validation is nice for the user but you shouldn't trust it because it can be circumvented.


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## wblock@ (Jul 30, 2010)

A lot of people seem to think client-side validation somehow prevents server-side validation.  I have seen some simple field input fixes on the web, like fields where dashes aren't allowed simply not showing anything when a dash is typed.  That's so much less embarrassing than accepting known-bad input and then acting huffy about it.

It would be nice to find just one open source web framework that would take formatting and data layout descriptions along with the database field definitions, and then apply that to both client and server sides.  Like Foxpro/xBase "999.99".  Frameworks like Rails talk about DRY, but then don't do it.


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