Jim’s Development Blog

One project that has interested me for some time is Museum Software. This is a database program used to record, document, and track items in a Museum’s collection (or archive). There are several well-known packages available, but many smaller organizations aren’t able to afford them - nonprofit organizations always have trouble raising funds, and local history groups (for example) will generally have a harder time because there is not any wide-spread interest in the mission. I thought that a well-designed software package would be a useful tool for many nonprofit organizations.

My plan is to develop the software in three phases:

• A Windows desktop application to run on a single PC or on a local are network (LAN);
• A module to export the archive’s details to a series of static web pages;
• A version of the desktop app to run on the web.

Phase two is important to many smaller organizations with web sites on one of the low-cost hosting plans. The ability to maintain the database over the web is less important than telling the world exactly what is in the collection. A series of static web pages will do that easily and inexpensively.

How I implement phase three will depend on the feature set that I choose, as well as which web server and database engine will ultimately power the thing. Since I have access to a linux server, PHP and mySQL might be the way to go, although I’ve played around with Ruby on Rails and found it to be very interesting. IronSpeed is another product that looks promising.

I’ll be developing the first phase using SoftVelocity’s Clarion language. I’ve been programming in Clarion for more than a decade, and it saves me so much time with the routine parts of writing a Windows app that I won’t give it up (despite the fact that it is what the rest of the world is using). Fortunately, none of my clients have cared if I used something other than VB… in fact, we have all benefited from the time savings. I’ll be talking more about Clarion as I develop the software.

The next step is to come up with a list of features.