Hi All,

Not sure which category to place this so here it is.

I do contract work for a client who has a suite of VFP applications that are used to maintain two main DBF tables. The names have about 800,000 records and the addresses about 450,000 records. The information in these tables is updated from many different sources on a regular basis in the central office via one set of programs.

At least once a year, these tables are sent to 54 descrete geographical locations and the data is updated in a local copy via a different set of programs (there is lots more to this but it doesn't matter for my questions) and the data is returned to the main office and the changes are incorporated into the main/original data set.

This was written 6 years ago as a temporary system but it works so it has been maintained and updated since then and there has been no real push to do something 'better'.

Now, with the discontinuation of VFP, they are FINALLY ready to move to something else. The geographic data is going to be housed in an Oracle data base and thus, the name data will also be moved there.

The current thinking is to use .NET (in some form) to replace the existing VFP functions. The idea is to house the data centrally and to update from the remote locations 'live' (really more like batch updates on a schedule) during these episodes of mass updates.

So, my questions are:
1. Is there any way to preserve/translate at least some of the VFP code into .NET framework?
2. Any opinions on which .NET (VB.NET and C#.NET or anything else) might be 'best'? Any pros and cons are gratefully accepted.

Any opinions, experience and comments are welcomed.

Thanks

Barb