On 10-1-2013 11:14, mariuz wrote:

> --- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com
> <mailto:firebird-support%40yahoogroups.com>, "Andy Gable" wrote:
>>
>> Yes they would BUT I can only code in BASIC (QuickBasic for MS-DOS and
>> Visual Basic for windows)
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: firebird-support@yahoogroups.com
>> Subject: RE: [firebird-support] Firebird & Windows 3.11
>>
>>
>> Wouldn't those machines run Linux fine ? I guess a lot better option
> than
>> go with such a ancient OS.
>>
>> --- Em ter, 8/1/13, Andy Gable escreveu:
>> I write EPoS Software for small shops who can not afford the new Windows 7
>> machines
>>
>> And some of the machines I get can handle windows 98 normally but I
> have had
>> a batch that only handles windows 3.11
>
> You can also try Gambas , seems to have Firebird support
> http://gambas.sourceforge.net/en/main.html
>
> Another alternative is Lazarus
> http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/

I don't think Lazarus will work in creating a GUI program for 3.11 - the
lowest it will run on is Windows 98 (with some quirks... though they may
not be too bad in DB programs).

The FreePascal compiler that Lazarus uses is capable of compiling for
DOS though:
http://wiki.freepascal.org/go32v2_development
http://freepascal.org/download.var
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_extender
... so perhaps a text mode program is possible.

The challenge here would be to find a Firebird/Interbase client
library... and program in Pascal instead of Basic.
That said, Lazarus/Free Pascal works nicely on Linux as well and I found
out it's not that big a move from Visual Basic.

If you use Visual Basic/Quickbasic, I wonder how you intend to interface
with the Firebird libraries - I suppose you'd have to write your own
wrapper to call the Firebird/Interbase DLL???
Sounds like a lot of work.

Perhaps it's easier to keep using text files locally on the 3.11 clients
and transmit inserts/updates/deletes as text across to the back office
which would process them in the db?