>I maintain an order system for a plastics company written in Foxpro 2.0. I am currently researching possibilities for upgrading the application to a Windows environment. I would appreciate any advice or opinions with regards to Visual Foxpro as well as Access97, Visual Basic, or Delphi. We currently have 22 tables in the system the largest of which is about 35,000 records. There are about 15 users using Netware Client32. SQL server or something similiar may be considered in the future. We don't have WindowsNT just Windows95. The users find the application very slow so I'm looking for speed as well as something which doesn't have a large learning curve. I am familiar with Access and Powerbuilder. Thanks for any input.

Hi Rhea,

I have developed in all the languages that you mention. Delphi is currently being used in the area that I work at the moment (but I'm extolling the virtues of VFP - uphill battle "Foxpro???" (watch eyes glaze over)).

I would recommend VFP firstly. It's far more RAD than any of the other languages with the added advantage that it's enhancement freindly, ie; it allows you to change anything in your program with ease. You will be able to develop and enhance your program with a speed that others pretend doesn't exist.

Access97 will not be a good choice due to the speed of data access and the size of your database (even using another database, it still goes through the Jet engine).

Visual Basic is good - if you like that sort of thing. I don't, but whatever turns you on...

Delphi is an excellent language. No doubt about it. It's RAD ability is one of the world's best and can do things that no other RAD package can do (whisper: if you pretend that FoxPro doesn't exist). In my opinion, FoxPro is the only language that can outshine Delphi. Certainly Delphi has more low level programming abilities and faster and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound ... but of course, by the time you have done all that, FoxPro has the code written and the program has been happilly running away for some time. THAT is the advantage of FoxPro.