Hi all

I'm doing a project for my client that is using a commercial package for his industry. His company finds the software awkward to use and slow.

I didn't know how bad it was until we set their system up beside my prototype. I'm using MaxFrame with my own extensions. It's completely VFP SQL based. IOW it's not using SEEK or SET FILTER, SET RELATIONS etc. The SQL generates a cursor which is read-write and indexed.

There is a picklist of part numbers in the off the shelf - OTS package. On my client's much, much faster PC the picklist of parts displays 14 records in about 1 second. It then displays a running counter as it grabs more records asynchronously. That allows the user to pick one of the existing 14 or to start scrolling through records. However, in order to resort the list, you'd have to wait until the records were pulled.

My VMP based prototype on my P3 650 Laptop pulled 6725 records in under 1 second. The user can immediately re-order the list without waiting. The client was astounded!

My point is this. If you think you need to kill yourself trying to use SEEK/SET FILTER/SET RELATION to to prepare a sortable filterable list to the user, you can stop. Use SQL to filter and generate a cursor from various tables. Index this cursor. Show the results in a grid. VFP is so fast compared to other stuff that's out there, you're wasting your time and energy.

I am proud of the work of Drew Speedie and other MaxFrame contributors, and all who contributed to VFP itself over the years.