>The inflexibility of non-scripting languages .... I'm not following you there. VB and C are not scripting languages but I would not call them inflexible. Can you elaborate?

Define sScreen as Custom
   top    = 025
   Left   = 020
   Height = 750
   Width  = 550
   BackColor = Grey
   ForeColor = Black   
EndDefine

Define sScreen_BeaneMikeWork as Lastscreen
   top    = 110
   Left   = 115  && you have a larger screen and the window is more in the middle
   BackColor = Blue
Enddefine

Define sScreen_BeaneMikeHome as LastScreen_BeaneMikeWork
   top    = 010
   Left   = 010  && you have a smaller screen and the window of the app needs to reposition
Enddefine

Define sScreen_BeaneDaughter as LastScreen_BeaneMikeHome
   BackColor = Pink  && The screen fits the same, but girl needs to make a color statement
Enddefine

Let us say you needed to built your screen settings into your app:
building an inheritance tree often makes sense as common factors like screen size
are common factors not needed to overwrite.

Handling such things in a table is easier on maintainance as the table is structured and
offers SQL commands. Bulding configuration files via inheritance is reduces redundancy.
Bare XML has neither benefit - but is seen as the holy grail in java because tweaking
and compiling and including leetle classes like that are much more of a pain compared
to scripting languages, were you often can let them stay in source to be compiled
dynamically (takes a small effort in vfp, is standard in pure interpreted languages
and an option in others, where a mechanism similar to the vfp-IDE exists in runtime.

XML as a wordy esperanto - less efficient compared to dbf when having middle amounts
of data but understandable . But first it is greeted because it eases configuration,
then XML is made rigid well up to the point of isolation in some web services. Aaaargh!

But imagine a world where an easy scripting language is the de facto standard and security
is not a problem - who in their right minds would create xml files for configuration as
this could be done using inheritance to reduce the amount of redundancy ?

regards

thomas