Hi Ken,

>I don't think it really matters if it is considered an innovation or something copied from another product. What matters is that it gets added and exists for .NET developers to use. There are many new control data-binding features in .NET WinForms created in VS 2005, and the designers of those features actually had VFP on their machine and they got demos of how VFP data-binding works. Then they took those ideas and new ones and implemented improvements for the data-binding story. The same is happening now for data-centric language functionality for future .NET programming.

It's too bad they didn't really 'get' the VFP model though, because what's in VS.NET 2005 is nothing like VFP databinding. It's different, and much more complex. It's much improved over 2003 but it's nothing like VFP's databinding.

And don't get me started on ASP.NET's new databinding features which are even more half assed in respects to control binding.

The saving grace is that you can easily extend what is there to work the way you need it to - it's not a black box which is what I've done to implement databinding that works nearly the same way as it does in VFP which to me is a simple and effective way to databind. While the new VS.NET 2005 offers more flexibility most of the 'usability' of the new features comes through Wizards and UI gadgets. It shouldn't be that way - databinding is not rocket science.