>>Your discussion gets to what I consider the heart of the matter, an app that you found you could only successfully complete with VFP.

As said, it could be done in C# but we ran into performance hurdles. It wasn't VFP itself that made the difference, it was VFP's autospanning local resultsets. MS has now said that we'll be seeing those in dotNET. Once they appear, we can all review, including all those people who believe that large local resultsets are a bad idea because they've only ever experienced the inefficient memory-resident version.

>>The hardest part for me in that scenario, is knowing that usage of VFP has dropped substantially in the last few years. And seeing developer camps where another tool is used that are hugh compared to VFP ever was and ever will be.

I guess you'll never drive a Porsche, then. ;-) Seriously, if you want to be a wheel in a big Corporate scene, you gotta fit into the slot they create for you. Every single person here would agree with that.

>>1) Could this task be accomplished with tools that you didn't have success with, such as Java and .Net, if you had a developer with the right knowledge, or found a source for changing your development strategy that would allow you to accomplish the task

Possibly. But since we tried using SQL Server Stored procedures as well, I'd be keen to hear what else should have been tried. Suffice to say that I am very, very sure of the reasons why very large local resultsets are the best idea.

>>2) Or are you absolutely correct, the task you needed to solve could only be accomplished with VFP. And this means that VFP is the correct tool for a particular scenario.

I don't think that the task can only be done with VFP. It can be done with C# (as we started doing in 2002) except the performance issues make that a dumb idea. Just take my POV for a moment... why would I go to the expense and effort of redoing something in a new language if it isn't going to yield an immediate better result? Especially when MS promises that the particular technology I am talking about will be available in dotNET soon?