# Best environment for a simple ODBC/Sybase app...

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-environment-for-a-simple-odbc-sybase-app/336845>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [December 22, 2005, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-environment-for-a-simple-odbc-sybase-app/336845 "2005-12-22T19:20:06Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![MrFantsyPants](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ba0ec/32.png) [@MrFantsyPants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrFantsyPants)\
**Post date:** [December 22, 2005, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-environment-for-a-simple-odbc-sybase-app/336845/1 "2005-12-22T19:20:06Z")

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I need to write a quick little Windows app to build some tab delimited files from a remote Sybase database, then upload them to an ftp site, and trigger a script on a remote server.

Can anyone offer some guidance as to what is a good environment to do this. I’ve been looking into PHP, as I know it quite well, but would prefer a standalone app. VisualBasic? Python? Perl? any other suggestions?

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**Author:** ![MrFantsyPants](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ba0ec/32.png) [@MrFantsyPants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrFantsyPants)\
**Post date:** [December 23, 2005, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-environment-for-a-simple-odbc-sybase-app/336845/2 "2005-12-23T03:21:52Z")

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Do I get one free bump?

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**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\
**Post date:** [December 23, 2005, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-environment-for-a-simple-odbc-sybase-app/336845/3 "2005-12-23T03:37:57Z")

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It is possible to do that through a combination of MS Access and batch files. It wouldn’t really be hard either. I don’t know how stable or reliable this thing needs to be but that would be the fastest. It would be super quick if you had someone to monitor it or kick off steps once in a whiule. It can be completely automated though for not much more work.

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**Author:** ![larsenmtl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d78d45/32.png) [@larsenmtl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/larsenmtl)\
**Post date:** [December 23, 2005, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-environment-for-a-simple-odbc-sybase-app/336845/4 "2005-12-23T16:51:53Z")

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A Windows GUI app? I guess it depends on what languages you are comfortable with.

I’m pretty sure everything you want can be done your VB6 or [VB.NET](http://VB.NET) if you have a license or the $1000 for a license. If I was doing this at work, I’d probably be forced to use VB6.

If I had my way, I’d probably use Python/wxPython. I don’t see a point of developing GUI apps in Perl (and Perl can be a pain to learn). If you don’t know Python, it’s easy to learn and you’ll then fight to do everything in it. IMHO, It’s very elegant. The down side though is that distributing your app is more difficult. Users will have to have both python and the wx bindings (or other widget toolkit - Qt, TK/TCL, etc… - I like wx because it uses the native controls in Windows and GTK in Linux).

Of course, **Shagnasty’s** response is probably the simpliest, quickest route.