EBME Forums Forums Maintenance Biomed Databases Ancient Software

I was having (yet another) sort out again just now and I came across some DOS directories on one of my hard drives. As always it was nice having a quick go with stuff that I had written many years ago. That is, "ancient" in today's terms.

In short, it is a hospital project database system, aimed at producing the various lists required:- Specs, BofQ, Item-by-Item, Room-by-Room etc. And then, later on, snag lists and good stuff like that.

Unlike equipment maintenance systems, it is primarily building based (rooms, room data sheets etc.).

For those who enjoy "stories", well here is the short version:-

The need for this program arose in September 1995 when I became involved in the design of a 100 bed private hospital at Qatif in Saudi Arabia.

The original version of (what became known as) Spex was coded using dBASE IV. Traditional structured programming was used (as that was the best you could do with dBASE IV anyway), as there was a need to have the thing up and running quickly to get the spec lists and room listings etc. done. That is, the client was in a tearing rush (as usual).

Both the Room_Code and Spec_No formats originate from that time. I simply sat down with paper and pencil (plus a cup of tea, of course) and those basic formats were never changed:-



During Ramadan 1996 (Jan-Feb of that year) a start was made on an event-driven, object-oriented version in dBASE 5. This was my first attempt at coding in that ("modern" at the time) fashion, and dBASE 5 was clever in that you could (and can) work in both traditional and OOP modes (and even mix and match between the two). Brilliant, really. Anyway, work continued only "now and then", but the system was presentable by the time the original lists were finalised in the summer of that year.

The program was taken up again almost a year later whilst on another project ... etc., etc. (details omitted). But it became clear that it could be useful in keeping track of work "at site" also.

Incremental improvements were carried out "as required" at various stages on various projects and a start was made on a Windows version some years later. However, the whole thing has withered on the vine these last eight years or so, as (regrettably) I haven't been involved in any New Hospital Projects since those days.

For an idea of what I'm talking about, take a look here.

Anyway ... getting to the "bottom line" here:- if anyone can make use of stuff like this, and doesn't shy away from the idea of using dBASE 5.0 for DOS (and is up to altering code pages, and stuff like that - it's working fine right now in the "DOS Box" on Windows XP, by the way), I would be happy to bundle it all up for them. But I can't promise too much in the way of support. Unless that is, someone can stump up some funding for me to crack on and finish off the Windows version (six months work at least).