>>>>Hello,
>>>>
>>>>A client asked me whether we support open interfaces. What should I think about this, and what does this mean for a VFP application?
>>>>
>>>>Thanks for your input in advance.
>>>
>>>Was that the same guy who was doing touch screen right click with right pinky ?? <g>
>>>What do you mean exactly by open interfaces ?
>>
>>They have a requirement saying the program/database should be open to other trusted systems to retrieve/extract information.
>>
>>The thing is, that I am not sure whether this is typically done by letting other application log directly onto the database, or whether it is better to write program interfaces in VFP that could be used for that matter by the other applications.
>>Since the other applications would run remotely, I think, the only way to do that in VFP would be to use a webservice or something like that.
>>I am not sure whether I am on the right track, but I can imagine that this is a typical requirement.
>
>VFP database is ODBC compliant by default but that wld not bring you much credits/them benefits as it is donkey slow. If your app is CS running against MSSQL or other then you might consider creating sort of metadata
>that you are comfortable giving ODBC acces to while keeping your crucial
>structures still private/safe.
>(You will sleep better!)
>
>Then there are also various file formats that you can export your data into
>then xml etc. If they wanna do data mining, then you can offer some data warehousing solution. Again it all depend on what they want precisely.
>
>Never done web service, so someone will hv to chime inn here
>if more info is needed.
>
>HTH

Thanks, I did not think about data warehousing, but that could be the best thing to do.