Hi Barb,

A couple of sideways thoughts.

First, VFP works fine with Oracle. You would, with a varying amount of work depending on how your app works (does it use views), keep your VFP code working with Oracle. If you use tables, there is a documented way to use SQLEXEC and make the cursor updatable. Again, it depends on how the app was written.

Second, eTecnologia is 90+% complete with the VFP Compiler for .Net. They are not only allowing VFP code to compile to .Net, along with seamless use of .Net classes, but are also extending the the VFP language. One extension is the SQLUSE command, which will open a client-server table as though it is a VFP table, and allow all the usual actions.

I call these sideways thoughts because they aren't mainstream ("learn .Net; you'll be a better person for it"). They're McDonald's answers (as my wife jokes, if she is what she eats, she's fast, cheap and easy <s>), though, and there's a place for that in the real world.

Hank

>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