I am also working on Java stuff, I wish we have the same forum on Java as Universal Thread on VFP.

Jonh, can you provide me with your Email address to ask you couple questions that may not be interested for other Foxpro folks?

>All
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>I thought I'd post some thoughts about ADO.
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>Just as ActiveX and its 16bit predecessors were introduced to provide functionality not otherwise available in MS's core products like VB, ADO is introduced in an attempt to provide functionality to other languages that many in VFP take for granted.
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>And just as ActiveX used to be a big deal but has since become a commodity and has become better integrated into IDEs, so will ADO become better implemented in languages and IDEs.
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>As ADO becomes a standard, its inclusion in VFP is therefore critical if we are not to be further marginalised.
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>IMHO we need to scream the house down so that ADO is better integrated in VFP. Had it been in this release, we could have begun using it more confidently and smoothed the path to (dare I say it) the language we eventually migrate to.
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>Yes, ADO is in VFP6... but that ADO cannot be used natively for VFP grids paralyses its sensible use in many apps. Apparently Ken Levy, yet again(!) has come to the rescue with a class that will do conversions for us. I have not seen it but my prejudice leads me to believe that converting to/from ADO using VFP code will carry a performance hit.
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>IMHO we need to make it very clear that not having basic ADO features like flexigrids is a major issue. Actually it is an old issue, with VFP never having had the power to manage multiple data binds with any ActiveX, and it is most disapointing that it is not fixed this release. Why not? One might also wonder why the VFP beta concluded so early when VB and VJ are still deep in beta and VS shipping has been delayed until September.
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>As for ADO itself: I have to be careful what I say :-) but one could be excused for comparing it to C/S in FP2.6. Programatic management and field-by-field manipulation is the order of the day. Yuk. :-)
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>But this will also change. MS itself built visual C/S view generators for FP2.6, culminating just a few months later in VFP3.0 that had integrated visual C/S views with "point and click" updating options. The same will happen with ADO. So just as many of us hardly care about what lies under our VFP C/S or ActiveX on a form, so will a new generation of VB, VJ and maybe VFP developers hardly care about the underlying ADO.
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>In the end, those who have made the move to parameterised views are very well prepared for ADO. Elimination of indexed seek/scans etc and replacement by Views is an excellent discipline.
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>Do we need to fear ADO?
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>As a new concept or standard, no.
>As something only partly implemented in VFP, yes.
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>Do we need ADO?
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>Some needs have been identified- transferring cursors to COM and other apps, for example- and these are real needs for those who remain in the Windows camp, who will be using COM more and more. I know some will ask "why do we need COM now when we never did before" and the answer is that breaking monolithic apps into COM objects offers significant performance, scalability, distribution and reliability advantages that we *should* be harnessing for our clients.
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>To sum up: My advice to VFP people is: look at ADO, learn a bit of it. It isn't so hard- most of it is perfectly obvious to VFP developers and really needs no explanation at all.
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>Hopefully we can run a few threads looking at traditional FP methods, how we moved then to SQL views in VFP, and how they are expressed in ADO. Armed this way we can then decide whether VFP still carries advantages for us, or whether we are better to move to other development tools that carry political or marketing advantages.
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>My opinion? Well, after using other tools and ADO for over a year, I'm still here. :-) Yes I have looked at other tools and yes my company has moved much of our work out of VFP... but into Java, not VB. If you want to use ADO, COM and so forth, I strongly suggest you look at VJ or something like Supercede that you can download free at supercede.com.
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>Regards
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>JR