John,
I was specifically talking about getting ad-hoc data from the SQL server and use it later in LINQ for post processing with meta data. You can think of meta data that is used for storing userrights and you need to mung it in with ad-hoc data requests comming from the SQL server.
I'm strugling to see how this would be done in the most efficient way without having to use casting nonsense and other scoping issues (which have been mentioned by others as well). Again this all comes down to transparancy of working with data through all layers no matter where the data originates from. This is a big issue to me personally and where VFP serves me well.
This is the reason I keep hammering on this. .NET has to mature in this respect, and though I certainly agree steps forward are being made, we still are a long way from the level VFP3.0 some 12 years ago.
Personally I'm not too fond of getting into open source as you do. I'd rather stick with M$ as I personally don't believe in open source too much from an innovative pov, so I'd rather stick with something mainstream, but suitable. The .NET platform IMO has a great future, and I'll certainly look into a development tool based on that for the future (VFP serves me well currently and I certainly don't see any inmediate reason to abonden it. Even new projects I would start in VFP as I don't see the current .NET platform as a viable alternative for what I do now).
I hope to see a viable alternative to VFP within 5 years on the .NET platform. It would be about the time that I would have made a decision, I hope.
Walter,
>
So what do you do when you have to process add-hoc SPT results, where you simply don't know the structure of your results at forehand.>
>You use Linq directly against the data. However, Rick Strahl has posted an important issue about scoping here
http://www.west-wind.com/WebLog/posts/33570.aspx and there's the whole issue of change tracking already covered in detail. That's why I keep saying "in April 2007". The behavior we see today is unlikely to be the finished result.
