Hi Craig


>I decided that the conference and blowing a few minds during my sessions was the higher priority for the moment.

Yes, please do blow some minds off, as I read in another post, employees (but us VFP users in this context) come to a typical burn-out point when they just do the things they have to do without that twinkle in the eye that they are doing / learning something new. So losing steam is not becuase VFP is old, but becuase the users have fallen into a rut and are looking for something to get the twinkle back and, bang, here comes the latest technology of languages and they say "Hey, let's get onto that band-wagon just so we can get the twinkle back". It's all about the "T" not Technology but the Twinkle, repack and give VFP back to them as Linq <g>.

Just a suggestion for your articles/sessions and VFP promotion. IMO VFP apart from the no/less publicity, gets a bad treatment becuase of it's data corruptions, esp. files with memos, in times of power-outages and computer hangs (well most of them are Windows computers, aren't they, if Windows hangs, is it the fault of the underlying application built on FP/VFP <g>). This corruptions has increased only after massive advent of Windows, DOS based PC never had this heavy corruptions problems with FPD apps, did they!?!

After this rant/preamble, what I was aiming for, was this: FireBird is a fine light weight open source RDBMS, which can replace DBF/DBCs for data-storage. I am pretty confident that corruptions will definately be less than it is with file based DBF/DBCs. VFP works beautifully with FB, in my limited experience, using Remote Views and SPT. As it is, the users don't need/care to know.

Can such a promotion of VFP+FB be beneficial to VFP? The first line of attack here is cost, there will be no change in the users cost for this combination as FB is free, commercially distributable as opposed to other proprietory RDBMS's. Second FB is light weight so no change in hardware, another cost factor. FB is cross platform so they can have a Linux server, another cost factor for the server. Security, FB has security as all RDBMS, yes it can still be overridden, but much more secure than DBF's. There maybe more advantages to FB than what I can right now think and know of.

So can you say: Hey, VFP just got more secure and less corruptible but without cost, hardware disadvantages?

Just a random, hopefully helpful, Pro-VFP thought. Disclaimer: I wasn't thinking about the heavy duty IT departments, just thinking about the proverbial Tom, Dick and Harry who require softwares.


>Thank you for your wishes and for your generous offer of help. I have always thought it would be cool to see India, especially with all of the technology going on over there. The IT schools there are among the very best anywhere in the world.

Welcome. India is a fine place to see, lots of old heritage, the temples and all, they can be beautiful to see. Just a side line trivia, most if not all of Indian festivities are evening/night based, with a simple meaning, that you do your work the whole day through, when you are done with the days work come and pray and festive with the Gods, you don't waste your working hours just because it is festive times, but that is the theoritical meaning <g>. If you are visiting for pleasure, Diwali (our New Year) is just round the corner, Mumbai (Bombay) and other metros should be the places to visit.

IT, yes it is very promising here. Lots of stuff happening in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Pune and of course other major places. I live in the West in the state of Gujarat (the west corner in the diamond shaped map of India) just above the state of Maharashtra, which houses Mumbai. Our state hasn't really picked up the IT fever but that has more to do with politics rather than dumb people.


>Whenever possible I attempt to respond to the individual poster (though sometimes I am just too strapped for time). Given that they are taking time out of their busy day to congratulate me and/or wish me well, it is the least I can do.

True, thanks.