I was more worried about
'using int13 interface to do disk io is slow, does not let me abuse hardware caching in the disk controller, if present, and does not let me squeeze every last processor slice out of the hardware like assuming direct control over the disk controller's io port does! This is DATABASE software, and time is MONEY!'
As it collides with
'Dosbox is really meant for, tailored for, and expressly presented for, playing video games. The file level access it gives is very high level, and as long as everything obeys normal dos io service routine conventions, our high level access methods work. It's not meant for full hardware emulation, please dont run stuff like that in dosboxm it's outside the use scope.'
With all the resulting chaos.
If this database software stays inside the box, and uses nothing but normal io service calls, and does not try silly hardware quirks to do stuff, it should run fine from dosbox.
There is just a very big risk that such software will want to squeeze every operational timeslice for the very maximum perf possible, and dosbox is not made to take that treatment. Strange Things(tm) are likely to happen if you try.
If this program works under dosbox, and does not crash randomly, or eat its own files, then you probably want either the [autoexec] section of dosbox.conf (if this is the only thing you expect to run with dosbox), or, you can inline all the mounting and invocation stuff with your shortcut/launcher.
To do the latter:
(Windows)
Create a shortcut to dosbox.exe
right click the shortcut and choose properties.
on the 'target' line, you should see a full path to dosbox.exe inside quotes. Just outside the quotes, you can append command line arguments. The -c argument accepts a command string enclosed in quotes, and can be used multiple times.
It should look something like this, after you append the needed bits:
Target: "C:\Program files(x86)\DosBox\dosbox.exe" -c "mount C C:\dosboxroot" -c "C:" -c "cd MyDBsoft" -c "MyDBsoft.exe"
Then click 'apply', then OK.
A similar invocation works with linux, using an .application file launcher. The same -c "some foo todo" syntax works.
