Technical Notes

If you like a bit of technical information, you might find this information interesting.

Programming Language

The Donor Manager is written using Microsoft's Visual FoxPro database programming language.  The version 5.x series of the Donor Manager was written in VFP 6, while the version 6.x series of the program is written in Visual FoxPro 9.

The underlying data tables are in .dbf format, first popularized by dBase.   There are drivers available from the Microsoft website that will allow you to open these Visual FoxPro tables directly in other programs (like Access, Excel, Word, etc.) if you wish via ODBC.

Why Visual FoxPro?

A number of years ago, our organization (World Gospel Mission) standardized on Visual FoxPro for all of its custom database development.  I got into programming at that time and became proficient in that language.  It's simple, clean, elegant, and you can produce a lot of solid software very quickly.

More recently, WGM has switched to using VisualStudio.NET for further custom software development, and I'm working (as I have opportunity) to learn .NET.

Is the Donor Manager an Open Source project?

Well, it certainly is in spirit.  But, because it is written using a proprietary system (Visual FoxPro), it cannot be open source. But, it does comply with the Creative Commons license, which has many similaries to the open source license.

Is the Source Code Available?

It sure is.  Just drop me a note and I'll be glad to provide you a link to it. You would need a copy of Visual FoxPro to make much use of it, though.

When will a Mac version be released?

At this point, there are no plans for a native Mac version of the program.   At some point in the future, if I can find a programming environment that I can learn and use that offers cross-platform capability, I'll be sure to look at it.

But the Donor Manager runs great on a Mac using WINE, Parallels, BootCamp, etc.