Craig,

Back at DEVCON time I stated that I was gonna take a genuine shot at Visual Studio 6.0 when it is available.
As luck would have it, it arrived at my door TODAY.

In other words, I *will* be "playing" with the other tools.

The issue at hand is not me - it is VFP's stated direction towards "middle tier".

As you have read from some others, this is *not* particularly the 'direction' EVERYONE wants and needs.

I simply tried to point out that this "direction" has a very *real* cost in ALL the other aspects of VFP, *including* even the VFP engiine itself (mid-tier hardly needs it).

You and a few others have stated many many times that a "common" reporter (and possibly a common menu feature) will be available. Well, WHERE's THE BEEF???

It ain't here with VS 6.0 and I doubt that it will appear with VS7 - which development team, precisely, do you epect to undertake that task??? Given other rationale put forward for the VFP Team's focus, why would any other team be any different???

Finally, I did say that I do mind that mid tier is the focus, BUT I *do* mind that it eliminates OTHER DEVELOPMENT which countless VFP users need very badly!

Cheers,

Jim N

>Jim,
>
>VFP will be around MUCH longer by playing better with the other Visual Studio tools and Microsoft technologies. It doesn't matter if *you* want to use the other tools or technologies or not....VFP will be here if those changes are made. It won't be here is the changes are not made. It's that simple.
>
>As for menu, forms, reports....just hang on. You will see changes made there. Visual Studio will be going to a common menu, form, and report designer. Given that, why should the Fox team put efforts into those areas?
>
>
>>Jim,
>>
>>While you have presented some excellent logic, its basis is more aimed at the longer term survival of VFP (as I read it) than on the general "utility" of VFP for years to come.
>>
>>For instance, positioning VFP as "middle tier" precludes any necessity to improve upon or add to the repertoire of GUI-type objects/commands. Many have significant concerns, especially as relates to the Grid, and this direction by MS essentially tells those people to forget about any improvements to the Grid!
>>Similarly, lots have asked for OOP menus and OOP reports. Again, this direction to "middle tier" essentially eliminates any chance of realizing those goals.
>>ADO is being promoted (at this time, to be replaced by some other 'technology' as/when MS sees fit), even though VFP always has been, and continues, to be the fastest and best pproduct for large database access. ADO apparently is "still growing" and as a consequence it still has problems, especially within VFP.
>>VFP could clearly benefit from a capability to *directly* pass record sets between VFP tiers and to (internally) provide for server-styled SQL capabilities between VFP-coded tiers of a system.
>>But we will never see this, and the main reason is because that ***might*** jeopardize the future of VFP within MS.
>>
>>MS is a huge company and actually has many many "markets". One market that they (apparently) refuse to acknowledge is the small to medium business which either will not or cannot afford the luxury of staffing specially skilled people for a variety of products, like SQL Server *and* VB *and* VFP *and* Java *and* etc. Sure, MS makes a lot more money on SQL Server and NT and all the related requirements, but they also LOSE LOTS OF MONEY which they could reap from those companies which will not spend it on that wide variety of products and skills.
>>
>>As I've written before, I don't really care if MS promotes VFP as the "middle tier". But I certainly *DO* care about the probable implications of their doing so. If it means no further development of VFP's GUI capabilities and OOP completeness, or if it results in the "fastest and best' database access engine NEVER being used (Middle tier hardly need reference to large and complex databases), then I take serious objection to their direction.
>>
>>Jim N
>>