My theory is 90% of the FoxPro apps that still need maintenance are crap. They were written by cobblers. And the guy who wrote them has left the scene.

About a year ago I had a client with one of those apps. OMG, it was awful. It was awful code written on an SBT framework, which is crap squared. They paid me well but every day was agony. I would rather swallow nails than work on something like that again.

>Hi everybody,
>
>I'm working with the existing application. The more I look at it, the more I don't understand.
>
>1. There are millions of public variables in all the places
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>2. Almost each form tries to switch datasession using SET DATASESSION command
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>3. There is lots of code in all the places (Init, Load, Activate, Show, valid of textboxes / gotfocus, etc.)
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>4. The code uses SET FILTER command lots of times
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>5. In one of the table we have about 20 or more indexes. About half of them use the exact same index expression, but different tag name.
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>6. The application is based on the VPM framework
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>7. The database is completely de-normalized / relations are based on names.
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>----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>No wonder this application behaves unpredictable. However, how I'm supposed to fix problems / bugs with it? If I try to change one little piece of code, I would not know what is affected - results of my change could be.
>
>BTW, when I ran this application in VPME and checked developer's info, I found the name of the developer. I searched VPM Newsgroup and found several of his questions there few years ago. The questions all seem to be OK.
>
>I'm just wondering how such applications can be written and more importantly - maintained later.