Hi Charles,

>Regarding data munging - I'm finding that in Strataframe with strongly typed business object that filling multiple cursors and doing the kind of stuff we do in Foxpro is really not very difficult - different perhaps, but definitely not the nightmare I saw in .NET 1.1 out of the box. I had seriously underestimated the power of .NET to do this kind of stuff. I think some of it you would like very much. It really isn't all that different (of course that the framework was created by Fox guys with Fox expectations for data handling helped a lot <bg> )

I'm not up to date how strate frame handles it. But to me that is not really the issue. It does not come out of the box, so it is only applicable to the developpers using strateframe.

For data handling. I'm very picky. I've been spoiled with VFP having very good SQL support for local and remote data manipulation through the SQL standard. Unless full support for ANSI SQL and/or D (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_(data_language_specification)) for data manipulation it is a kludge in any way you describe it. One could stress again and again that it is not that limiting and it is not that difficult. But that is not the point. It is propriotary, non standard, non scalable solution. Why the hell was SQL not build into ADO.net from the beginning ?? Can anyone explain ??




>>>>>>Since when is NET 'proven' technology ?!? Are you talking about NET 1.1 , or latest 3.5 which is... how old ?
>>>>>
>>>>>Are you kidding? .NET is clearly proven technology - it's been around since circa 2000 and used all around the world in a vast number of situations. That is, unless you are looking through VFP tinted glasses.
>>>>
>>>>In which case you'd have to say "which was around since about 1988" but the age is not the point, right?
>>>>
>>>>I don't see dot net as a mature product yet. There are too many major features added with each version. It has yet to reach the stage of VFP 9 or even 8, which didn't bring anything Earth-shattering, just had so many small and useful things that made life easier and operation smooth. With the sped up pace of development, such a version of dot net should be delivered real soon now. Let's see, if we consider VFP3.0 to be a beta, then VFP5 was equivalent to 1.1; that was '97 or '96 vs 2001. VFP8 and 9 came out in 2003 and 2005, i.e. eight years after the first usable version. Now taking that this is 2009, i.e.eight years past the first usable version of dot net... well, I assume it should be getting a few final touches in this year's version and then be SP'd once or twice in the next couple of years. Then it would be discontinued, three guys left to drop by once in a while to see if there's an urgent fix to deliver and the "don't forget to turn off the lights on your way out" by the door.
>>>>
>>>>Of course, there were many of us who lived with the first usable version, which was soon used all around the world in a vast number of situations, and was already a proven technology, unless you were looking through VB6 tinted glasses... it's all relative, my dear Albert.
>>>
>>>Can you give us an overview of your experience with .NET? (innocent look)
>>
>>My experience stops where I had to dig into how you would do the following in .NET.
>>
>>Did you ever had the pleasure to create a flexible factory with .NET. A factory where you have a table (whether DBF, CSV, or XML), with meta data in it. In one of the columns there is UDF code in there that in VFP you simply could execute with EXECSCRIPT() or a macro. I've seen pages and pages of code and that even never touches the power of a one or two page VFP solution.
>>
>>And how about retrieving some base set of data from the SQL server and use that data for data munging operations? Sure LINQ can some of it, but it utterly limited in many respects.
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>>And my personal axe to grind is the static typed implementation. Why the F*CK do I need to write just as many text as functional code to keep the compiler happy. If I retrieve a table from the SQL server, I just don't want to jump through all kinds of hoops to get at the data. My general feeling of programming in .NET is the same feeling of programming in Borland C/C++ in the early 90-ties. WTF. The time of pure static and pure dynamic languages are over. eTecnologia has implemented an awsome feature. A choice between static and dynamic typed declaration.This avoids a lot of horror constructs just for the sake of keeping the compiler happy, while maintaining the possibility of compiler time (BTW, my opinion is that that is too late in many cases) type checking and performance optimization
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>>I've seen the announcement that C# is going dynamic, that would be interesting to see. At least they now are beginning to scratch the surface of understanding the power of dynamic languages.
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>>Sure you can create simple payroll applications in C# and VB.NET about as easily in VFP. But take a highly datadriven application floating on lots of metadata and you have a total different situation.
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>>And sure for anyone who is looking for a programming job opportunity learning .NET is a good choice, much better over than learning VFP, but that does not mean that .NET is better at writing certain types of applications anymore than that Windows 95 was tehcnically better than OS2 when introduced.
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>>After I've drawn the conclusion, I've decided to wait. Not that I've currently got time to do anything else than VFP development. I've got much more on my plate than I can handle anyways. And I don't see that change in the comming 4 years anyways.