🚀 go-pugleaf

-- Peter Yamamoto writes --
> 
> Our university is on a five year (or so) plan towards a "centralized"
> data processing system. We are using DH in our department for a grad
> database and it appears that we are probably one of the most electronicly
> developed departments (being the CS department that's a relief to
> hear!-).
> 
> The problem is or will be that the centralized database is going to be
> an Oracle database.

    Hm... this is a problem.

> Other than dump and load, does anybody have any experience or any idea
> of how DH may be able to communicate with an Oracle database or some
> other Oracle front-end application (or any other database/spreadsheet
> for that matter)?

    To my knowledge there is currently no way for DH to communicate with
other programs, and it certainly has no capability to work as a front
end. Perhaps this ability will be includede as part of Helix Express at
some point, but for now DH and HE are self contained applications/rdbms. 

> On a related note, what Oracle front-ends are there for the Mac?

    Well, there are a whole bunch, not the least of which is Oracle
Card. I beleive that it is also possible to write your own front-end
using something like FoxBASE, 4D, or Hypercard provided that you have
the correct extras for these programs. You might also want to look into
using DAL as your means of communication. This requires the purchace of
the DAL Server for whatever machine is running the Oracle database. If
Oracle Card can't do what you need then you are going to have to look
into some other solution, like the ones I mentioned above. If at all
possible, I recommend using a full-fledged realtional database, like 4D,
as your front-end. There are some functions that you can only get with a
database that you might find very helpful, to say nothing of report
generation capabilities. Good luck. 

-- 
-Hades (Brian V. Hughes) 
	    "Egads! These look like a women's fingerprints"
						   -- Durlock Holmes