Perry,

>Once again I get back to one of my original points. If .Net is unfinished business, especially since it's missing these critical features that are found in VFP, why are so many folks developing in .Net today? And why are so few developing in VFP?

Now I'm not going to say that .NET is not suitable for database software development (or any development) for that matter, but the anwer of your question does not have anything to do with how .NET is suited for software development. something to think about.

- If OS2 really was superiour to windows 95, why did it lose the battle for low end customers ?
- If Lunix is far more stable and less susceptible for virus attack, why isn't this the platform we should be working from ?
- If .NET is far superiour to any other language why do we still do development in other languages like VB, Delphi, Java, C/C++ ??

It is very cheap to question the size of the VFP community on these arguments. There might be very valid technical reasons to do VFP development, esspecially when your application is highly data driven and depends heavily on post data processing (Local SQL), data munging, code injection (macro's, execscript), and ad-hoc problem solving (command window). Areas where VFP is strong and .NET is weaker.

It also is hard to imagine to .NET promotors about hardware and OS issues. Even in here in holland I've got an install in a academical hospital where I have to deliver software that runs on Windows 98. How do you think this issue is in the rest of the world. Also about hardware, .NET is not going to be a good choice on limited hardware, which is frequently the case in less economical strong countries, but also here when companies has a policy that hardware is only replaced once in 5 years or so (because they have huge numbers of workstations).

There is the issue of experience. Some shops might have a huge experience and code investment in VFP, and might not have the luxury to invest a year of time in just switching the development platform and get proficient in, just for the argument of a bigmouth ".NET is better". I can safely say that I'm a well seasoned VFP developper who know what my strengths are. In .NET I'm a complete idiot searching the UT, MSDN and Google for how to implement certain functionality.

However, I do know a few things about RAD (Rapid application development), and I can tell that a few things in .NET don't impress me at all. It would not suprise anyone that is the way data is handled in .NET. Data should be handled with SQL. Sure you can use SQL through ADO.NET, but once it is in, you're doomed to play with ADO.NET which does not have the neccesary DML to effictively do post data processing. There is no way you can use SQL SELECT, UPDATE SET and DELETE FROM on a ADO recordset other than send it back to the backend (if it supports ADO.NET). Otherwise you'll have to write your own (unproductive) classes to solved these issues. The issue of memory hogging when having large amount of local data hanging in your application is a second one, essecially if your application has to run on TS or citrix (we have a few).

That beeing said, I do believe in the statement that .NET is still in its infancy (which is a compliment as I do think things will eventually get better). The areas where VFP is strong are relatively week. Therefore there is enough reason for both side of the camps that the might be valid reasons to choose one over the other.

Walter,