I have been working on a WinDev project and recently been using the Table control quite extensively. Quite frankly it is awesome. The power that comes with this control straight out of the box is amazing. A table control is like a VFP grid, except 100 times more powerful. You can connect a table control to a file or a query or view. But you can also populate the table directly without any file/cursor at all just by adding the rows to the table using a simple TableAddLine() function.

To give you an example of how fast this is I can add 50,000 records into a 10 column table in under 1 second and the table displays instantly. But what is more impressive than this is that WinDev builds an index on every column automatically on the fly which allows for ascending / descending sorting immediately. You do, of course, have the ability to define your own column indexes which includes the ability to mix ascending order in one field with descending order in another! I don’t know how they do this so fast but this indexing is effectively instant on 50,000 records (the most I tried). Obviously this all happens in memory, but even so …

Once the table is displayed it comes with a popup menu button in the top-right corner of the table (or right click anywhere) which presents the user with what WinDev calls the Automatic Application Features (AAF). This popup menu, which can be modified, contains functions like this:

Copy the selected cell
Copy the selected row
Copy the selected column
Copy everything
Save to Excel
Save to Word
Save to PDF
Save to XML
Chart the data (multiple charts possible from line to pie, etc.)
Select the columns to show/hide
Print the table

When you move columns around, show/hide them, re-size them, this is all remembered for you. Next time you open this window with this table everything is restored to your way automatically – no coding required from you.

Columns can not only be sorted but also searched within, for example, find the row that starts with some text or contains some text. That is all done inside the column header with a search for, like, not like, is equal to, not equal to, etc. You can also filter the table to a subset of rows according to some condition.

You can lock/unlock columns from scrolling dynamically by clicking their bottom left corners.

You can choose to allow users to select nothing, a cell, multiple cells, a row, multiple rows, a column, multiple columns, and/or everything. Once selected you can copy to other apps or drag and drop into other applications.

Table controls, like all applicable controls, are all touch-screen ready. For example, you can flick the table with your finger to continuous scroll it up/down. Slide it left and right, and so forth.

What is that “Print the Table” function in the popup menu? When selecting that you can print the table and a print previewer appears. And the print layout is exactly the same visually as the table appears on the screen complete with fonts, colours, headers, columns widths, etc. i.e. it is a 100% print version of the on-screen table view including if you resized the columns! But it’s not just a print preview – it contains numerous features that you can use before printing. For example:

Add a watermark
Add annotations, arrows, lines, circles, boxes,
Add overlaying text
Add images
Change colours
Print in duplex
Find anything in the report/table
Save to Word, PDF, XML
Convert to HTML email
Automatically convert to PDF and attach to an email
And more…

And it automatically will offer to switch to landscape mode if portrait mode will not fit completely.

All of this is provided automatically as part of the control - no coding. All you need to do is populate the table either by linking it to a file, query, view or adding rows to the table in a loop. It is this sort of out-of-the-box power which comes with everything in WinDev that makes you very productive in WinDev. Some anecdotal opinion - I have chatted with several WinDev developers of long-standing who also deliver commercial .Net solutions and in other tools when requested to do so by their clients. They all say the same thing; yes, they can deliver the same in a .Net or some tool but they can do it in WinDev at least 30% faster.

Is WinDev perfect? NO, not at all. It has some funnies, some weird ways of doing things, or rather, just its own way of doing things. Is it 100% bug free? Also, NO, you need to sometimes find ways around issues and use alternatives. I have hit a couple of what I think are bugs but not 100% sure. In any case, I found ways around them quickly enough. But in terms of what it does offer it is very powerful.

WinDev 19 has been released. Yes, the brochures contains lots of girls. It also announces 900+ new features and enhancements to their product line covering desktop, web, and mobile platforms. These range from significant new features to minor improvements in existing functionality. But the point is they bring new versions out yearly.

http://www.pcsoft-windev-webdev.com/WX19-Features.pdf

If you are still not sure where to move to (or to move at all) it is worth exploring this platform in my opinion. If nothing else you could expand your VFP platform offering to mobile solutions. Will it take some time to learn? Yup, so will anything else. But I think WinDev will be easier to learn than most non-VFP alternatives because it is so much like VFP in style and method.