John,

Only a bit to say, interspersed as were yours. . .
>>Your analysis is excellent, but it is wholly MS-centric!! Let me give you a more customer-centric viewpoint:
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>Thanks, and I think your observation is fair. I guess I see things from both sides. As a developer I wish VFP had more respect and resources. As a business person, I understand why things are they way they are.
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Newsflash - I'm not exactly *NOT* a "business person". As such, I still do *NOT* understand why things are the way they are! I know of no "business person" who would deliberately starve a million+ seller into a les than 500,000 seller. That's business that *I* understand!
>
>>FPD/FPW was almost magical in its power of DB access speed, and most of this was retained with the move to VFP.
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>>FPD/FPW was, essentially all in one box, everything one needed to build a full-function "run-the-company" app., with no per-user licensing and no other external requirements save a network to serve the data.
>>
>>MS, apparently unsatisfied with that state of affairs, set about to change things. The first thing they did was to give short shrift to the DBF format, doing absolutely *NOTHING* to further enhance it in any way. Then they invented real kludge ways to access "other data formats" and pronounced that as the way of the future. This meant that it was necessary to license SQL Server (or some other, which didn't work quite as well, Im told), to get your work done. So now we have a facility which is crippled (cf R. Strahl says a minimum 50% decrease in response for DB access and Goley compares 5 seconds in VFP with 9+ minutes in SQL) by comparison and which requires more bucks by far and more skills by far just to end up WORSE off than we were before!
>>Sure, that makes more bucks for MS, but that is no reason to support such a loss. Where else in commerce do the users/customers readily support the actions of a firm which inevitably result in more cost and poorer service?? Not too often, I dare say.
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>It is true that the need to go to C/S should not be driven by speed. On average, VFP will be faster. I am pretty much on record with this. However, a 5 second query taking 9+ minutes in SQL Server??? I would say that things are not on an even playing field as there is probably something amiss with the SQL Server configuration.
>

It should also be true that the "need" to go C/S should definitely *NOT* be driven by coercion (sp?). VFP is also remarkably close, but apparently will NEVER achieve, the capability to be all three tiers of a C/S solution.

>I would love to see the DBF structure enhanced. I think ADO is a way that satisfies everybody. DBF's would only serve the VFP community. ADO is pallatable by all - and that is what MS has to concerned with. I would rather have one data access strategy that all tools could use. Then, the full weight of MS can be behind the product - instead of things getting fragmented.
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>>Sure, you can play on my sensibilities and ego by promoting the fact that I am >better off knowing 2 or 3 or 4 languages over a single language. The BIG >difference is that, until now it has always been MY CHOICE. For instance, I >learned French thoroughly because I believed it would be useful to me in my >home country. I still feel that way, though I rarely USE it. But it was my >chioce. In the case of VFP, by keeping the product down, they are FORCING me. >I don't like this.
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>I agree with you here in that if MS is going to keep VFP around - maybe they should not have concentrated on the middle tier stuff. For most developers, those improvements don't mean squat. People want better ActiveX support, a better report writer, OO menus, etc. Perhaps the best thing would have been is to have kept VFP in line with building monolithic apps. If a developer wanted to go the way of components, he/she could then migrate to VB. But you know what would happen then, folks would complain that VB had something that VFP did'nt have. It's really a no win situation. At Devcon, you see topics like ADO, Internet and Web Based stuff - because there is a general interest. However, it may also be apparent that many VFP developers still do not want to go outside the box. Thats fine as you can still build some pretty nifty apps with VFP alone.
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>>You know, I once read that there were over 1 million FPD/FPW programmers. Now >we are down to less than one-half million! Do you think VFP 3 had anything to >do with this??? I sure do! VFP 6 seems to address this - perhaps a little too >late. Who knows???
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>VFP 3 hurt the cause in a lot of ways. OO really scared a lot of folks off. Rod and I have often discussed and contemplated how different things would have been if OO was left out of VFP 3. I think 75% of the Fox base became disenfranchised with 3.0. Its never good to do that to your user base. The Fox community never asked for OO. Maybe it should not have been introduced until 5.0. Who knows.
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>>John, it sure sounds like you are paid by Microsoft. You sure don't seem to >think like a customer.
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>No, I am not an MS employee, although I am an MS vendor. I tend to look at things from a business perspective first. There is plenty that MS does that I disagree with. But, I do respect MS's right to run it's business with the concerns of it's shareholders as it's foremost concern. To do otherwise would be counter to the philosophy of free enterprise.

There you go, unable to put yourself in the CUSTOMER's shoes again. You know, ALL companies have a bottom line and shareholder profitability as their concerns, NOT just Billy and MS! What about the rest of the world, John??? Are MS' profits MORE important than the whole rest? I should think it would actually be the other way around - the more comapnies can make using compnay X's product, the more that company X's product is likely to sell! In what other line of commerce do you hear the customer telling the supplier "yes! yes! make me buy more of your different products at much higher cost" " yes! yes! make things way more complicated for me than they have to be" "yes! yes! And do it to me again and again!" "yes! yes! - take most of the profits *I* make so that YOUR shareholders will be happy campers".

That's some business perspective you have there, John. The business of MS and no one else', I'm afraid.

regards,

Jim N