Hi Jim,

<< I greatly appreciate your long and considered response. >>

No problem. It really helped me collect my thoughts and figure out where I stood on this issue.

<< As I said, It comes down to whether or not one can believe that MS *can*, given their record to date, deliver such complicated pieces that all work real well together in a trustworthy and responsive way on a wide population of similar workstations. My bet is that they cannot, and that we will pay a very heavy price while they try to. I would even predict that VFP might disappear in their attempt to do so. >>

It's not just MS though. Symantec's got the same theme going with DB Anywhere. Sun's got JDBC. A lot of the big vendors are going with CORBA. Most of the other developer tools are going along the same line - letting you create and host components in their product.

<< I've been around this business for over 28 years, and I've seen similar tried before with failure as a result. While I never wish failure on anybody, I do feel that such a result is far more likely in this very much more grandiose scheme than anything tried before. >>

You may turn out to be right in the end, but I think the # of players involved may help it to be successful this time around. OTOH, I sorta think MS might be taking a step backward with DHTML. We sorta had a standard with HTML and now we've got this supercool, IE specific version of it.

<< I do feel that its unfair to make VFP and its user population pay such a heavy price as we have been paying for something which is a far-reaching vision. >>

If the ActiveX support gets fixed in VFP - and the general issues with deployment and compatability of AcitveX controls gets addressed - then VFP is already in a position to reap the rewards of this approach more so than most other tools. VFP's OOP and ability to subclass ActiveX controls can't be overlooked when determining the major players in this arena.