Need advice: Upgrading from ancient database program

Hi,

I need some advice in regards to the most suitable upgrade. I work in a small textile factory (around 1,000+ employees) and we are still using Foxpro for DOS for our production database.

We still need to develop a database program for a few departments that currently only uses Excel. However, I am reluctant to recommend the use of the current program for new developments as I've found that Foxpro is not quite as powerful, integrated or flexible as compared to currently available database programs. Please correct me if I'm wrong as I don't have an IT background.

In regards to the IT infrastructure, we still use about 80% of PIII/II computers, hence the IT department was not able to migrate to a more powerful program earlier. In addition, our internal IT development team is only familiar with Foxpro.

I would like to propose a new database program be used for new developments while slowly migrating the existing usage from Foxpro to the new software. On the other hand, I would also like to minimize the initial outlay in regards to hardware upgrades, although I understand that we need to upgrade some of the PCs.

Can I get some advice as to the most suitable database program, keeping in mind the initial outlay, additional training for our IT development team and migration difficulties.

I would like the new database program to be sufficient for the next 2 years until we can upgrade our manual systems so that we can implement an ERP system in the future.

Any feedback appreciated.

I guess you're looking to migrate the actual data from the old Foxpro to a more powerful database. If that's the case then this is a pretty significant change that will require TONS of testing. There are plenty of free DBMS's out there that are quite powerful. Depending on the amount of data you need to store you could use something like MySQL (free), SQL Server Express (free and there are tons of developers for it - very main-stream), Oracle (maybe the most powerful) has an "Express" version that is free with some minor limitations for what you seem to need, and Firebird is very light-weight, free, and pretty simple to use. You need to consider the front-end (part that the user will actually see) and include that in your decision for DBMS.

Again, this is a large project. I also would not recommend doing it one piece at a time unless the data sets are truly 100% separate and independent. Any data in your Foxpro that is dependent on other data will need to be migrated along with the rest of it.

Is this any help?