>>I feel the same way, I'm doing Java now and maybe Python in a near future too. As for a DB PostgresSQL it's simple amazing and truly free.
>
>Can you recommend some good discussion group for Java? I did some courses, but I still get stumped on basic stuff... and I want to learn some more advanced stuff, such as database access, that isn't covered in the one-semester courses I took.
>
>Hilmar.

Unlike with VFP I have not used Java forums yet. There is people here at my work that are helping me since they are java experts (and I think they are getting tired sometimes of me telling them about how easier it was with VFP).

I'm not at the level I achieved with VFP, I'm sure it will take much longer for that to happen.

Als for learning I really loved "learn java 6 in 21 days" book from SAMS publishing; it's a really good way to get the basics and some advanced features.

You could also try the official java tutorials at http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/index.html

For IDE I'm using Netbeans (http://www.netbeans.org/features/). I can't tell you if it's better or not than others java IDE's, it's the only one I have used, but it's really good. You can actually bind controls to data now.

For reporting we are using http://www.jaspersoft.com/jasperreports (but I have not worked with it yet)

Saludos Hilmar