Platform. ODB is implemented in Visual Basic 5. This means that it only runs on Windows. With help from Robert Krajewski, we did an extensive analysis of the paths to bring ODB to the Mac and/or Linux platform. We considered using Mono or Python, but at this point the fastest route seems to be the proprietary RealBasic development environment.

A rapid port to RealBasic will enable us to take advantage of the enormous amount of work that has gone into the current code base, while at the same time improving the quality of the source code.

Thus the current plan is to attempt a port to RealBasic in 2006, which would enable people to run the application on a Mac or Linux platform in addition to Windows. This would also enable ODB to use a database backend such as MySQL or PostgreSQL. Furthermore, RealBasic 2006 is able to use fully internationalized Unicode text, which is a big plus.

The source code to ODB will still remain open source, and we are committed to improving the quality of the code, thus making it easier for yet another port to a fully open source development environment.

When we begin the RealBasic port, there will in effect be three branches:

• Legacy. The 0.9.x version of ODB, currently installed at over 300 nonprofits.
• 1.0. This is the new version released in February 2006.
• 2.0. The cross platform version -- the intent is to mirror 1.0.x, but provide more international compatibility (unicode) as well as a database abstraction layer.

The database back end is Jet 3.5 (Access 97 compatible) for Legacy versions, and will be Jet 4.0 (Access 2000 compatible) for 1.0 versions.
MySQL has been tested, but it is too slow when standard ODBC is used to access the data.