>Personally, I would only look at two options, .Net or Java. There are open source tools like Ruby on Rails, PHP, Python, etc, but they don't see the acceptance of .Net and Java and, IMO, will always have much smaller market shares. There will always be the "next great thing", which is what Ruby on Rails seems to be right now, but if you look back, the "next great thing" from anyone other than Sun, IBM, or Microsoft, never really took off. Remember Powerbuilder?
>

I had a contract to work for an International Company, using Visual FoxPro in San Jose. They had a group from Boston, who used PowerBuilder. This occurred during 1998. There were three PowerBuilder programmers.

In order to compile their work they had to go by 28K modem to Boston and it took a very long time. If they made a mistake - well lots of time was lost. Once compiled Boston would send back the exe and they would test it.

I took a look at their code and said I could duplicate it in VFP. They looked at my results and were amazed! “Why I did not know that VFP was a 4GL”! Within a few minutes I could write the code, test it and then the PowerBuider crew would save time. Whenever they sent the files back to Boston they knew it would work as it had been “pre tested locally”. :)





>As for databases, if you go with .Net, then SQL Server is the obvious choice. For Java, I'd go with Oracle.
>
>>I've been developing in Visual Foxpro since it was Fox (in the dark ages). We have a large application that we want to be able to market for years to come. Knowing that VPF will eventually be dropped by Microsoft, and our competitors are starting to use this go get an edge, what software engine is the wave of the future? I know everyone has his own preferences, but for someone who loves VFP I hate to redevelop all of our software in anything but the Microsoft application of choice.
>>
>>Our systems are used by companies where multiple 1,000,000+ record databases are not unusual. So we need speed and reliability.
>>
>>Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
>>
>>Brad Trim
>>Systems Support Company