I didn't see anything about the backend so I assume the app is currently using DBFs. I don't think it is necessary to do the middle tier and front end in .NET if you are more comfortable with fox, but I think this would be an excellent time to put the backend on SQL server. By doing that you'll definitely enforce an n-tier model in your new design and you'll leave a lot of future options open, using the best of whatever technologies are available. With a SQL backend you can point .NET modules at the same data if in the future you need something .NET does better and still have a well-designed foxpro app doing what it does best.
I think doing a rewrite and keeping the data in DBFs would be a disservice to you and your client.
>I'm doing some work for a company that wants to convert a foxpro application to .NET. The application doesn't have a good design and having gone thru many programmers it's been patched a lot, so basically the problem is not that it is in foxpro, the problem is the design is poor.
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>Now in terms of converting, it does make sense to go to a newer technology like .NET, but of course having all foxpro programmers on the team (5) there's gonna be a learning curve which means that it's gonna be a long term conversion.
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>Then I started thinking, the main purpose is to have a good designed app that is developed in the shortest time possible as to impact the business positively, if it takes 1-2 extra years to conver to .NET instead of foxpro that's 2 more years of inneficiency and lost revenue, so I thought what if we redesign the application as planned but using foxpro in a tiered model, let's say a three tier model, that way we take advantage of our knowledge of foxpro and can get the app out the door much quicker impacting positively business and then little by little we can start migrating the front end to .net or whatever other tool we want and then if need be the middle tier also.
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>Any thoughts, testimonials? I know a lot of people are doing conversions so very curious about the these ideas, pros-cons, under the above scenario.
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>Thanks.
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
