I don't develop for the enterprise, my clients are small to mid-size looking for solutions that work and are cost effective. Few if any know that I'm currently using VFP so they rely on me to choose a product that allows me to develop solutions in the tradition of VFP.

Real Software may be a small company... so am I... but they are delivering a product that has the features and flexibility of VFP with the added benefit of cross platform delivery. Anyone look at the market cap of Apple lately??? They just went passed Microsoft. I know, I know... that doesn't mean that they are going to over take the Windows world anytime soon, but if you can develop and deploy a business application for the Mac, I would wager that you'll sell more to the Mac community (because of the limited competition) than you will in the Windows world.

Real Software allows me to do both... satisfy my large Windows user-base, plus begin tapping into the Mac community as it continues to gain market share.

One of the things I've learned during my 25 years in business is that you need to anticipate market trends or you most assuredly miss out on an opportunity. For the last 3 years I've been watching Apple gain an upper hand in areas where not even MS can make a dent. Many believe that they are a consumer electronics company, but the heart and soul of Apple has always been and will always be their OS.

I know a lot of VFP developers have tunnel vision and only see the opportunities that Windows provides... and they are huge... but there is also a huge number of developers ready and willing to pursue those opportunities. By contrast, I think the potential in the Mac world for business desktop applications is even larger for those capable of meeting the needs of the Mac community.

With that in mind, I don't see MS providing tools to allow me to pursue those opportunities, but a company like Real Software does! I own my own company so I'm not worried about job opportunities. My only concern is pursuing opportunities that benefit my users and in return provide benefits to my company.


>I don't know anything about this package but I do have some thoughts.
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>If you're writing an application that you wish to sell, will the market receive it any better than the equivalent application written in VFP?
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>If you're a contractor looking for work, how much is out there.
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>If you're looking for a "job" as opposed to a contract, is there anything out there? I did a quick search on Indeed.com and got zero hits for "realstudio"
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>>As my title states, if you're still looking for a migration path from Visual Foxpro to something else, I would strongly suggest looking at RealStudio (formerly Realbasic, which is the language that it uses). I've been working with it for the last year and now starting to put into work developing applications.
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>>Here's a couple of little know facts.
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>>RealStudio is written in Realbasic. Fully object oriented and multi-threaded.
>>Microsoft uses Realbasic to prototype Office for Mac in their own development community.
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>>Some of the short comings of previous versions have been eliminated. They now have a built-in report writer, although 3rd party products seem to offer more features.
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>>Built-in database (SQLite 3), however, it is recommended for single-user applications. They offer RealSQLServer for multi-user applications; however, there are other databases supported by RealStudio. If you develop an application using RealSQL database, you can jump to one of the other supported databases without re-coding. Very cool.
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>>Additionally, RealStudio allows you to develop applications that are cross-platform without a lot of additional programming. And when I say cross-platform, I mean Windows, Mac, and Linux.
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>>There's a lot to like in RealStudio and they have a 30 day demo; but it will take a bit longer than that to get your feet wet. I looked at .NET, but RealStudio creates executables that don't require a runtime or a multitude of DLL dependencies. You can literally develop an application for Windows (or the other cross platforms) that you can copy to a folder and run.
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>>If you're looking for a product that provides the same flexibility and speed of development (and then some) that we came to love in VFP, then I would highly recommend RealStudio. The built-in classes allow you to do almost anything you could dream of. VB programmers should feel right at home.