>We too have a very mature Fox app in a very niche industry ( we are the only supplier of our product other than in-house solutions ) that we are moving to another platform. One word of advise, no matter what anyone says, do not get caught up in fantasies with obscure platform technologies. MS has bet the farm on .Net technology and it is here to stay so it is wise to learn it. Sql Server is what it is the defacto standard database server other than Oracle ( which is pricey ). T-Sql is almost exactly like ANSI-Sql so that transition is easy, but learning to program for the server takes practice ( so do SPROCS ). Yeah you can learn Linux based stuff or MAC/OS but for right now and the immediate future ( next 20 or years ) MS holds the market.
>
>We liked Fox but it had run its course both with MS and with us. We looked at several options and decided on .Net and Sql simply because we make a desktop application and .Net is a big part of that future and 100% of our clients run Windows.. We chose C# as our language. So far we are happy with our decision. The learning curve is not that hard once ( I was a C++ programmer so not that hard for me as others on my team ) you establish time to actually write code. It is not the language as much as learning where everything is as far as base classes and methods of implementation. I like to remind folks good software people are problem solvers, so language doesn't make a difference as long as it can provide the technology needed to solve the problem.
>
>Main thing is do your homework but do get side-tracked on pie in the sky solutions that you will regret later. It took us a year to decide and we have a 5 year plan. Stage 1 database to Sql with Fox UI and middle tier ( some small chunks will be in C# ), stage 2 convert the rest over to C#.

I probably should have mentioned that we need a development system that will allows us to freely distribute our apps and the data source. SQL Server (full one) would never work; however, SQL Server Express certainly would and can be freely distributed.

However, I'm still worried about the learning curve with .NET. Our apps are NOT client server, they are truly desktop apps with local data access... typically on a local server. We need the flexibility of allowing our users to easily move data files from local server to local hard drive without any hassles.

Currently, our apps are for the Windows market and I don't really see any changes in the foreseeable future; however, if we could develop multi-platform, that would be excellent. That would just open up another market for us and our application can be used by any type of organization. They all need it and are either having outsourced to their accountants or they are doing it themselves.

Many of our users (accountants) are pushing our products to their clients because it is that easy to use and it allows them to maintain the data themselves instead of paying per diem to their accountants to do the same thing.

Any other suggestions or development platforms that you considered?