This transformative tutorial debunks old ideas of database application programming and replaces them with a framework that includes some of the best Open Source tools available.

Goals Set. We'll start with an overview of the problems we wish to solve and the goals we wish to achieve. Among them are platform independence, completely open-source tools, good looking graphical interfaces, and simple deployment.

Choices Made. Several choices need to be made among the vast sea of open source tools. We'll explain how we came to decide on PostgreSQL for our database back-end, Python for our programming language, SQLAlchemy as our PostgreSQL library, GNU Make as our development environment, and PyQt as our GUI.

The Journey. The journey will be the creation of an example application using the outlined framework. Roughly it will follow these stages:

• Design of the Makefile.
• Creation of the database tables using PostgreSQL statements.
• Sample Data made using SQL.
• Design of the user interface.
• Implementation of the UI with SQLAlchemy.
• Creation of the installer makefile rules (this will include installation of PostgreSQL server from within another installer).
• Making of a pretty SVG Icon quickly.
• (if there's extra time) Using JSON as a file format for partial PostgreSQL database dumps.

The sample application built will be a simple customer management application, but the same techniques are applicable to other software including web applications.