Hi !
I think exactly the same about Enrico's words. "A commercial provider and a company just don't allow you to install anything on their server.", this is true.
I have been working for 20 years in a big company and everything related to servers, if they are not standard and approved modules, they practically send you out of the offices.
But I think that in this interesting thread there are many mixed topics and I would like to contribute my humble vision and I would base myself on another approach
Most users of here work in FWH and dbfs. Ok, ok, I know that many use different databases such as mysql, Oracle, ... but I speak in general.
I repeat, in general, most of the programs of my colleagues here are designed for small (perhaps medium-sized companies) and if we rely on the use of dbfs and the client demands a web solution from us to exploit their system, how do we do it?
I am currently in a project of a large Windows system made with FWH and the data in DBF's. They have told me to be able to do the web part using those same dbfs tables. How could we solve it? Well here is a solution for this scenario and it is mod_harbour.
I really don't think that someone with an application from years ago should "migrate" to the web, but perhaps if it can "relate" to the web, taking advantage of the benefits of each ecosystem.
I can tell you that mod_harbour is working fantastically and after these months, this group of companies in which I am working, is looking to expand different modules and evaluating a series of extensions that will surely give me work for months, possibly years and in the end the concepts is this: A system that has worked in windows with dbfs for years that can have functionalities on the web
What does this mean? That you have a vein to exploit, a great opportunity and that the web is indisputably part of our reality.
I will not be the one to say if it is better to win, if the web is better ... rather I think that everything has its positive side. But if I will say one thing: mod_harbour is currently a stable tool and that within your field can give you many joys in the coming years
The only problem here is learning the web environment, because miracles don't exist
, but if you invest your time I assure you that you will have a lot of work.
Finally, a reflection. If we had to learn, for example, to program the web with the most used and consolidated tools today, we could basically invest time in knowing php (to create a backend) and the different languages for frontend (html, js, css). All of this takes years of learning, years !
I think you are privileged, because the backend part, you can use harbour, of which all of you are already experts
. This gives you a faster learning curve, with the advantage that you will work within an environment of your whole life, such as dbfs
C.