Mike,

Could you elaborate on the points I've put into Bold Italics? Are you talking efficency of execution, enhanceability, development, data integrity...what? I'm needing to learn and you've demonstrated more knowledge in this arena than I've got.

Thanks,
Rick
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>... While the canned functionality a framework adds to your applications is certainly important, the underlying architechture of the framework and how the canned functionality is implemented are much more important. IOW, a framework with less built in features, but a very sound design is often better than a framework with tons of built in features, but a less than optimal design.
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>Why? Because as you've said, no framework will ever do everything exactly as you want. If the framework isn't flexible and your basically stuck with the out of the box behavior, then it may get in your way more than it will help you.
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>This sounds funny coming from me because our 5.0 version probably has the most features of any of the frameworks. I wouldn't say that our 5.0 version is inflexible, but there was certainly a lot of room for improvement in it.
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>As an aside Jess, what kind of apps are you creating with your own framework? Are they three-tier? Can you easily develop non-VFP front-ends for applications developed with your framework? Are business rules clearly separated from the user interface? Do you have extended meta data beyond the DBC that the objects in the framework know how to make intelligent use of? Are controls directly bound to data or to objects? Is there a developer or development team that specifically manages the framework and doesn't create applications based on the framework? How do new developers get brought up the speed with the framework and how well is the framework documented?
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>The reason I ask is because all of these are important factors in an application framework and becoming more and more important as time goes on. It takes a lot of time in the design stage to implement and typically in-house frameworks tend to basically skip most of the design stage and instead evolve as more application needs arise. The danger in this approach is that ultimately the framework becomes unmanagable and continues to lose more and more flexibility as it evolves.