Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

IBM bought out Lotus, and maintains all the products "to some extent." 

Hi Craig,

I am highly experienced with Lotus Notes, as I am working with it for 7 years and have developped several very big database applications for user groups up to 10 people. Approach can be used by several persons at the same time, from very easy up to very complex calculations can be (easily) handled with approach, an enourmous number of dates can be put into one database, it can be used simultaneously by several persons etc.etc. We are using approach as a project tracking system, for various charging- and billing procedures plus for aa big number of reporting features.

It is true, that approach is not supported any more in future, but be sure, there will be always enough persons, who can handle it. Moreover, you are true, there is no documentation available, in the last 7 years at least, I did not find any except some very very basics for the first 10 minutes while creating a database! But, the help function is not too bad! What I have learned is all from experience and I must say again, approach is a brilliant program for a lot of applications.

What you are looking for, could be handled extremely well with approach (I guess, from your mails....). 

Heike Valentin

  

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Hi Heike :-)
Thanks for your note and endorsement. I`ve been using Approach now for about 5 months, and I`m impressed!

Yes, it`s both a networkable and a relational database, and quite easy to understand. I don`t like certain user interface things, like the field calculation window being too small, and being unable to put returns in the code. But those are minor compared to the many features that are terrific!

I found several user groups, one of which is connected with Susan Sloan (not related to the Sloan brothers). Another is the IBM support group, and between the two, I`ve found answers to just about all my questions.

Like Q&A, the installed base is so large that it doesn`t matter if the original company doesn`t support or intend to improve the database. That installed group works like a user group. Unlike Q&A, though, Approach is a full windows interface (32-bit).

All in all, I`m super-impressed with the application, and bought one of the last used copies of "Using Approach 96" by Que, from Amazon. The database does exactly what I wanted, can handle huge amounts of data, stores to a .dbf format so it`ll always be readable, and is easy to work with. :-)

I also see that Alpha-5 looks like it may have changed hands? I got an advertisement from VCOM that they`re selling it for about $100. That application has a direct Web interface for developing Web-based databases.

WebWorld mentioned something like this, and I`m going to have to research it. If it`s useful, that might be something to get into. And Alpha-5 is current, still being supported, if I understand things right.

Hello. Thought I could help. Better late, than never. I bought Approach in `96. I learned it by picking apart the Orders smartmaster application. It`s the best software you could have picked for your purposes. Easy to use, very powerful, great asthetics. I have been using 9.7 since it came out. The new help index should give all the info you need. I recently purchased Alpha5, version 8, for a complex project I`m doing. I was worried about future support of Approach, which is a crying shame. This latest version of Alpha 5 is not as quick and easy as Approach at building applications, but it has more features and abundant support.

Hi Startstuff! Thanks for the note on Alpha-5. You know how it is, you buy something, invest in the learning curve, then wonder if you`re going to end up with obsolete software. I`m seriously pleased with Approach, but also worry about how long it`ll last.

On the other hand, I used Q&A, the DOS version for years and years after it vanished. I still use it, sometimes. The ONLY problem it had was not being a Windows environment, which meant no printer support. Approach covers all that, so as long as we have Windows (of some sort), I`m pretty sure the databases will work okay.

Of all the gripes I could have, there`s really only 1. It`s that the field programming window is so small, and you can`t use hard returns in the "if...then" logic. You can while typing, but it reverts to one long line, which is very hard to follow for complex programming. But I can live with it, given that I have zero problems printing reports.

I think from what you`re saying I`ll probably stick with Approach. I don`t see the real advantage to Alpha-5, unless I were to use it for a live Web database. Since I`m not a Web developer, that`s not an issue. If a future developer we hire might use it, fine. But for our home office needs, it looks like I`ve found my Most Excellent Solution, in regard to a great little database. :-)