Phew, Thomas, you ask hard questions :) I am certainly not an expert in WinDev so perhaps I cannot answer all your questions but I shall try add some 2c comments inline:


>I have previously skipped Windev mostly because of the tilted distribution of french vs. english speaking developers:
>not only on the chances of getting usergroup help but also on the chances of getting contracts to fix existing SW.

Public Support:

There are 2 primary forums for WInDev; one on the PCSoft website itself, which is less well attended, and another one run by an Austrian fellow named Guenter at MySnip. Both are free. The latter one is pretty well attended and I would say is the main forum for WinDev at the moment. It is frequented by the WinDev "gurus" like Guenter himself, Fabrice Harari, Michel Fages, and many more and you will find answers. The architecture of both forums is old-style and hard to navigate. WInDev needs a UT style forum imho. There are other forums and resources in the world but not like you will find for .Net. These two are the main forums. Guenter runs a WinDev development company as well as being a reseller of WinDev products.

PCSoft Support:

This is very good with turnaround times in 24 hours. However, the free support is limited and I think you need to buy a support plan if you want more direct help. I have seen some people complain about the support from PCSoft but I have found it is very good. But 99% of all my questions I find with a little searching in the online help and I prefer that option because one thing leads to another and I learn much more.

Documentation:

The documentation is excellent and very extensive. Almost every function and command has examples included plus a "Also See" button which leads from one topic to the other. It is very well laid out and quite easy to find things. WinDev also comes with hands-on tutorials which one should follow as complete as possible. It will take a week. Thereafter the documentation becomes a great learning tool.

IntelliSense and Other IDE Tools:

Simply awesome. Besides the obvious aspect of IntelliSense you also have tools that automatically update your project as you change your function/procedure names, variable names, etc. It is very well integrated IDE and handles many tasks that in VFP you have to do yourself.



>Also I find the style of PC-Soft marketing more of a turn down than drawing me to test the product ;-)

This is true. They have for many years opted for a "sexy" approach to their brochures and marketing angle. I don't know why, perhaps it is French thing? Their marketing department obviously likes that approach and perhaps it appeals to the geeks, I don't know but I don't let it bother me. Perhaps they find that it works for them but you should not bother about this; the marketing departments idea of good marketing has nothing to do with the tool itself - books and covers, etc.


>But the ability to compile into different runtimes is something interesting, esp. coupled with a client side database and replication. As replication can be somewhat thorny ;-))) Can you tell me a bit more about update conflict management in Windev/Webdev compared to vfp view/CA handling if one utilizes their Hyperfile as local cache ? And your take on their replication implemention welcome.

I cannot offer much practical experience. HyperFile is like VFP's database on steroids. It will be instantly familiar in both its implementation/definition and its usage to any VFP programmer. It can run in standalone mode (what they call Classic mode) or client-server mode. You can create tables in code, index them, manipulate them, etc. Views and Queries are treated like HyperFile tables. Below are some links - follow the See Also recommendations;

HyperFile Help - http://doc.windev.com/en-US/?3044156
Replication Help - http://doc.windev.com/en-US/?3044266


>As their system is a meshup of language and application fwk, how difficult is it to implement personal ways to handle
>data / caching ?

Same as VFP - I can create tables in code, use them, populate, delete them, connect them to form elements/controls, etc. More powerful than VFP because of the additional functionality (encryption, field types, memo field indexing, etc,) and power of HyperFile (file size limits, number of fields, etc.). But, obviously, you don't have to use HyperFile at all since WinDev will connect to any 3rd party database system.


> Often a fwk eases only a certain way of app structure and automates almost everything, while going
>a different path is very difficult. In vfp fwks some were more difficult to handle when trying to implement a different base workflow. How easy is it to alter something like that in WinDev ?

It is not a framework, it is a complete development language and you have full control to do things how you like. However there are many tools to help development. One specific point I shall mention here; WinDev uses the concept of an "analysis". This is a plan or specification of the databases your application will use. You design the tables, fields, and indexes. And then visually connect the tables with rules and triggers in a flow diagram style. You must create the analysis if your application will use any databases. Initially I didn't get it but then I realized how powerful this is. It is with the analysis that WinDev can, amongst other things, (1) automatically and seamlessly update client side databases according to changes you have made on your end, (2) it automatically provides access to the tables and fields in the IntelliSense, (3) automatically ensure field type correct usage in your coding, (4) it enforces all business rules, key uniqueness, etc., (5) when your application runs on the client side it uses the analysis to create all the files that the client is missing (or updates files if the client has them), (6) you still have the ability to use non-specified files and/or to create more files in code. For a silly example; I wanted to see what would happen if I deleted an index from one of my files. I ran the application and without mentioning a thing it re-generated the index and continued on as if nothing was wrong. These little things, multiplied a hundreds times, makes developing apps that much easier for a programmer.