For whatever reason, I haven't heard of any big marketing extravaganzas to push Visual Foxpro. Without the big marketing push, Visual Foxpro seems doomed to remain a niche product ... even though it has the capability of building applications upon which an entire company can run.

You are right about the power and versaltility. But the big team VB/NET IT departments and their associated big team DBAs would have to get a real job if VFP acceptance was allowed to make the "sense" that it does.

I don't know - it seems to be awful popular. Years ago I spoke with an IT manager that among other things, maintained DELLs internet order system. A bunch of the files were still FP2.6! We talked about how we introduced ourselves at technical meetings, and she admitted that sometimes she coughed, covered her mouth and tried to mutter "foxpro" as inconspicuously as she could.

I wen to NYC a few years ago to make a presentation at a large capital management company - a company that sponsored VFP in the MS excellence awards. I guess at that time they had just caved to the VB shrimp mongers. The resistance was strong from their IT group - but the sales and staff people liked what I showed.

But the fox is everywhere. I don't think it needs marketing. It's not just developers that use it, but also business analysts. They use it to query SQL, or local DBFs, and dump to EXCEL, HTML or reports. The command window is just so darned handy. I know my oldest loved the fact that math homework could be checked by the "?"!

It just needs to get back into the college corriculum. But MS ssems so dependent on big team high cost tools, that it will be a while before that happens. If M$ went to publicizing fox, the buffet shrimp bill would be smaller because it does not take a big team to deliver useful VFP apps.

The market seens to go against M$. Maybe thats why VFP seems to enjoy so much much poularity. Maybe thats why I don't jump on the band wagon!