If one wants to write a complete database software like FOXPRO or DBASE III, What steps are involved and where one can find help on internet or web to do this ambitious project? Have anyone tried it? What is the best language or software to do that?
Your comments, help, tips, pointers, suggestions ... all welcome.

Thanks a lot in advance for all your help. Have a nice day.

Rizwankh

The biggest hurdle is to find a need that you can address, better than anyone else has addressed it before. If the ability to address that need will attract enough customers to justify creating a new package, you've solved the hard part of the problem of creating a new software package.

Once you've got the project to that point, you need to find a competent developer to help you implement your idea. This usually isn't too hard, since a good idea will often sell itself.

Good luck!
-PatP

[QUOTE=Rizwankh]If one wants to write a complete database software like FOXPRO or DBASE III, What steps are involved[/quotes]

Many steps are the same as any other big project. Take a class in software engineering.

But in particular you need:

A model of how the user thinks.

A logical model. (The relational model, unless you're going to reinvent mathematics.)

A language to bridge those two. (Hopefully not SQL.)

An engine to map your logical model to a physical representation.

Tools and language features to allow the user to do the management tasks.

Look at open source database packages like MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc. See sourceforge.net .

I hear there's this guy named Larry Ellison who had some luck selling his DBMS software.

Do you mean what language do you write it in or what language does the user use?

Here's the dilemna. The relational model depends on joins which mean that it has to compare things.

Now most languages (including C++ and SQL, the lingua franca of commercial and open source DBMSs) have a problem rather like President Clinton: they have trouble deciding what the meaning of "is" is.

By that I mean a profusion of equality operators, inconsistent typing systems and over-reliance on pointers. (Or references. Which are pointers, damn it.) Alas, the best language for writing languages, LISP, is the worst offender!

I'm working on this myself, and my solution has been to write my own language. I've been working on it for 3 years now (mostly in my spare time) and have only in the last 6 months finalized the design and convinced myself that it is "relationally correct."

Comment: Since this is going to take 10 years at least, it's not unrealistic to start by getting a dual degree in mathematics and computer science. Preferably from an institution that respects mathematical fundamentals and doesn't just churn out drones for industry.

Hey you're talking about my old university there!