Reading the first part of your post made me think back to how I was using OOP in VFP. With hindsight, I realize I was using it in a useful fashion for UI controls and I'd have classes for logical units such as 'Emailing' etc. But, at least until I started working with XML, I *wasn't* using it for data at all - that was still strictly tables/cursors. Of course that may have been the right decision....

On the WPF front: I actually spent some of the Xmas break re-reading the Apress Pro WPF book - this time from cover-to-cover resisting the inclination to skip over bits that I thought would be irrelevant to me (OK - I did skip 'Interacting with Windows Forms :-})
Amazing how many things I'd forgotten or realized would be of use in situations that I hadn't considered.

My weapons of choice for the desktop are now definitely EF and WPF (with a strictly enforced MVVM pattern) - and if I can use Silverlight for web stuff I will.

>In 1995 when they roled out the "new paradigm" of OOP Booth and Speedy and the other evangelists were showing objects talking to each other and objects defined based on use case roles etc and no one ever showed a practical way to actually do those kind of object in VFP. Everything everyboyd wrote in VFP was RDMS code (at best - most of what I got called in to fix was bad dBase or FPD FPW code) with properties and methods (maybe) and in the more sophisticated frameworks business "objects" etc. that at least allowed for good n-tier design But the model was based on the RDMS tables.
>
>The "entities" that were part of the original discussion just never materialized. I remember about 2000 somebody talking about ORM ( the missing piece ) and it made no sense to me at all.
>
>Then when there was talk of EF and nHibernate etc I started to see what they were talking about, but it still seemed an immature technology or at least tool set. Then came 4.0.
>
>For some reason once I "got" the terminology - especially "navigation" things really started to click. The ORM was built in ( Julia's videos on creating the EDM from Database and then the reverse really brought that around for me ), the LINQ suddenly seemed useful and then Ideablade's docs answered a lot o fmy questions about what I thought might cripple n-tier deployment. (the stuff they do with a disconnected entity cache really opens up some possibilities.)
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>I've been chugging along with Winforms and VB and Strataframe business objects that are very powerful and very well designed for Winforms and apps that work like my VFE apps worked. Good stuff. But it won't translate well to WPF and would require a *lot* of rethinking. MS seems to indicate EF is the direction they had in mind with WPF and I think with VS 2010 it's pretty obvious WPF is where .NET development is going. ( one .net wasn't scarey the transition to C# was remarkably easy - got tired of looking at LINQ examples and having to try to translate.)
>
>WPF makes more sense to me than any UI implementation I've ever seen so I'll play. Between Blend and DevExpress WPF controls the weak link is just my own design skills ( and the temptation to put in waaay more sizzle than I need just because I *can* <g> The old "I've got a Mac with 50 fonts - and here's a ransom note" syndrome )
>
>This stuff is fun again.
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>
>
>>>I make no secret about being a framework guy and a sucker for third party tools. ( I have a fuzzy warm spot for things that make me a lot of money )
>>>
>>>Long ago, Cetin suggested Ideablade's DevForce to me but only now as I am transitioning to C# and have fallen in love with WPF and the Entity Framework am I really seeing that DevForce 6.07 and its Entity support is the wave of my future.
>>>
>>>And most impressive is the incredible level of documentation !
>>>
>>>And apropos of that : DevExpress has been a constant source of delight - both in their amazing documentation, training videos, samples and support.
>>>
>>>It is a joy to see people really doing it right.
>>>
>>>I loved what I was doing in the VFP/VFE days, but VS 2010 and these two tools have made all that seem like the days of writing Applesoft.
>>>
>>>BTW, Julia Lerman is a goddess. She first got me excited about EF in .NET 4.0
>>>
>>>http://community.devexpress.com/blogs/seth/archive/2010/11/08/video-julie-lerman-on-entity-framework-4.aspx
>>
>>Hadn't seen that. I think she's definitely right about POCO support opening EF up to a lot more flexibility.
>>
>>>Good article(s) in the always good Code Magazine :
>>>
>>>http://www.code-magazine.com/article.aspx?quickid=0909081
>>>
>>>Her book :
>>>
>>>http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Entity-Framework-Building-Centric/dp/0596807260/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1295547023&sr=1-1
>>
>>I've got the book but must admit I didn't find it an easy read. She sure knows her stuff and I learned a lot - but it was hard work. Then again maybe it's not possible to explain EF in terms I find easy to understand :-{.
>>Anyway there's not much else in the way of EF books out there.....
>>
>>>Her videos :
>>>
>>>http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/ff191186
>>>
>>>It was only after going through this stuff that I started to appreciate how cool the stuff Ideablade was doing in DevForce really is.
>>>
>>>Hope this helps somebody else looking for "what's next"
>>
>>I just used EF with the Silverlight RIA services templates - that was an interesting experience.....