Background
The original shoe store database application was implemented with MS FoxPro on a Macintosh system. The motivation to migrate the database came from the fact that FoxPro was obsoleted by MicroSoft and obviously the database will not benefit from continuing advances in technology. I selected PostgreSQL on the following reasons: 1) PostgreSQL is available under a very relaxed license, and may be used without fee; 2) PostgreSQL came in my Red Hat Linux distribution; 3) PostgreSQL has support for ANSI SQL and transactions, enabling me to advance my SQL programming skills obtained with FoxPro; 4) PostgreSQL also presented the opportunity to sophisticate my programming skills by developing database interfaces in C/C++, Perl, Python, and Java; 5) A minimal equipment investment was required since Linux runs remarkably well in machines that would otherwise be obsoleted due to the other operating system demands. |
