Tell me about Pick Basic (Universe) - Programming

Sais

Hi all,

Have found a job opportunity to get into IT as a Trainee Developer 'developing in a Pick Basic (Universe) environment'. So, tell me about it!

Google searches seem to indicates that it is a database management tool, but maybe not widely used? The job is with quite a large builder merchants (turnover ~£3bn per annum) - any idea what it is likely to be doing? Further, does anyone know what careers coding in Pick are like, if there is demand for those that know it etc? Any experience, advice or comments?

Any help is welcome, thanks in advance!

Weretaco

Oh wow.. never thought I'd see this come up

I actually do most of my work in pickBASIC at my job. It's interesting to say the least. A large part of the job is trying to modernize parts of it though. I write a lot of windows/web application to interact with the backend D3 database we use here. As far as a community goes it's pretty small. There is a comp.databases.pick newsgroup with some very smart guys who can help out but for the most part you're on your own when stuff crops up. If you have any specific question feel free to PM me here as I've been doing it for about 6 years now.

Sais

That is certainly the impression I seemed to get - small community for a system that seems to have been around for a long time!

Weretaco, if you don't mind me asking what sort of applications do you write? Do you get involved in other languages? Do you see it as a good thing to get into, or worth trying to get into something else?

Weretaco

It's an interesting question. I write business applications, custom reporting, all sorts of general stuff that comes up for our company. Being such an old database there is also a push to modernize a lot of the front end stuff though. Generally I write backend stuff in pickBASIC and the front end stuff in C#. There are some pretty good libraries and connectors out there to handle communication back and forth. It's also a neat way to keep your programming skills flexible. Heavily object oriented front ends talking to a procedural backend coding style keeps you on your toes as far as your code design goes. Most of the complaints I have in my pickBASIC stuff have less to do with the db and more how the business system we have running on it works. You would probably run into stuff like I do where some of it was written by guys from the punch card days who never really updated their skills so you get outdated techniques and some hacks from when data storage was a premium.

prasrini

Hi all,

I am working for a project where I need to build a .net front end to a Pick database to generate some reports. Does anyone know some connector that I can use to access the database using SQL server? Please let me know!