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Police department to receive new software


By Kenda Williams
Staff Writer

Published: Monday, September 17, 2007 at 6:15 p.m.
Last Modified: Monday, September 17, 2007 at 7:26 p.m.

The police department has less than a year to replace its computer software, which is a system that has been bought by Microsoft.

The software, FoxPro, controls computerized functions within the department, from dispatch to recording tickets. Now that it has been acquired by Microsoft, police officials have learned that after the summer of 2008, FoxPro will work, but the department would no longer receive software updates.

City council members Monday agreed to set aside $40,000 from the current budget to acquire a new system. Southern Accounting Systems has offered to write a new software program similar to FoxPro that would be ready by summer 2008.


Comments

  1. tod says...
    September 18, 2007 2:32:04 am

    RE: http://www.timesdaily.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20...7/NEWS/70917012/1011

    The information in this article is not accurate or complete.

    Microsoft did not just recently buy FoxPro. It bought it about 15 years ago. Are you referring to a vendor who has gone out of business and will no longer support the product?FoxPro will continue to work AND be supported by Microsoft for several years. There are thousands of FoxPro applications on the market, all of which will continue to work and be supported for many, many years.

    I hope that the police department is not making a hasty, uninformed decision about this. Implementing a new software system, especially for $40,000, is not a decision that should be made lightly!

    -----
    Tod McKenna
    http://blog.todmeansfox.com
    http://www.blackstoneprovidence.com

  2. GoFish says...
    September 18, 2007 4:25:43 am

    40k seems kind of steep for simply converting from FoxPro to (I suspect) Access but I'm not a developer so what do I know.

  3. interventor says...
    September 18, 2007 6:21:14 am

    40K isn't too much if the developers are writing from zero, but to adapt an Access database to the police database appears a bit much. Some of my people do it on their spare time.

  4. joeycuda says...
    September 18, 2007 6:49:01 am

    The high cost is in porting it to the Apple IIe.

  5. dogsoldier0513 says...
    September 18, 2007 7:03:19 am

    Hey...the IIe was a step above the 'Trash 80'....with more processing power than NASA had available to them during the 'Apollo' missions. Don't knock the lowly IIes. Thousands of public school classrooms across America STILL use them to educate our kids. They're the '350 Chevy' of the computer world.

  6. joeycuda says...
    September 18, 2007 7:17:49 am

    Oh, that's cool. I have one stashed in the garage with the Amiga 1000 and Commodore variants. We had Apple IIes in elementary school, someone gave me one and I couldn't let go of it.

  7. cjtl1000r says...
    September 18, 2007 9:24:58 am

    Are those the ones that were so fun to play Wagon trail on ? They accepted like a 6x6 floppy disk or something.

  8. dogsoldier0513 says...
    September 18, 2007 9:28:02 am

    Yeah...but I think you're referring to 'Oregon Trail'. They also had a HUGE following for 'Dungeons and Dragons' players in the early '80s. We had a 'map' on the wall in the computer lab 'illustrating' the 'troll's cave',

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