[ale] Partially OT: moving apps from old to new PC's(non-Linux)

[Geoffrey]

griffisb at bellsouth.net wrote:
> 
> 
>> 
>> From: Geoffrey <esoteric at 3times25.net>
>> 
>> I've got to say, this is a perfect opportunity to move them to
>> Linux. Save them money, and have more robust systems.
>> 
>> Don't tell me they can't learn it, my 60+ mother-in-law is on SuSE
>> 9.0 right now and has been on Linux for a couple of years now.
>> 
>> Email and browser at first.  Most recently using OpenOffice to
>> maintain the family reunion address book.
>> 
> 
> 
> It would be good. My main concern is that the Parish records are in a
> Paradox database (old stuff, it loads under DOS on the server). I'd
> hate to tackle that project.

Understood, but it would be a good idea to move them to something that's 
more current.  Check out:

http://jan.kneschke.de/projects/pxtools/

Summary:

The pxtools are a set of tools to convert a Paradox-database into a 
SQL-database (MySQL, PostgreSQL), CSV or XML.

If this version of paradox supports odbc, then you can access the 
database via perl.

I realize that's asking a lot, but it might be a long term conversion 
process you can do.

> But, since there should be a few "spare"
> PC's after all data is transferred and tested, it would be a good
> idea to set up at least one Linux PC.

That's a start.

-- 
Until later, Geoffrey                     Registered Linux User #108567
Building secure systems in spite of Microsoft