Hi Rick,

> Could you elaborate on the points I've put into Bold Italics?

I'll try. :)

> Are you talking efficency of execution, enhanceability, development, data integrity...what?

Basically all of the above.

> the underlying architechture of the framework and how the canned functionality is implemented are much more important.

Basically this all goes back to flexibility. No framework is ever going to do everything you want right out of the box all of the time. One of the primary benefits of Object Orientation is the ability to "program by exception." The underlying design of the framework has a great deal of impact on its flexibility. For example, let's say in your application you have one place where you want to use your own search form or a third party search form that you want to use in your application instead of the one that comes with the framework or that you want to use this form application wide. How easy is it to plug this in? Does the framework open the search form by way of a hard coded method in a class somewhere, or is there a property you can change to use a new search form, or is the form class used for searching data driven? IOW, do you have to change the framework in order to make customizations, and if so, how much? This is just one area where flexibility comes into play, but flexibility is probably the single most important factor in a framework's design.

The real point here is how well does the framework equip you to deal with exceptions? If the framework does 90% of what you want, but makes it very difficult to handle exceptions in the other 10% of the cases, you might be better off without it.

> Are they three-tier?

Go to Jim Booth's web site (jamesbooth.com) and on the "Stuff" page, check out his article on n-tier development. It explains it very well. From a framework standpoint, the only question is does it support 3 tier or n-tier development?

> Are business rules clearly separated from the user interface

Business rules are the primary reason we write database applications. They basically ensure that operations performed on the data are performed in accordance with the rules of the organization running the application. Business rule is the generic term for things like data validation, posting, allowing deletions, etc. Separating the business rules from the UI has a number of advantages in terms of the maintainability and flexibility of the application, particularly for applications that you plan on running for a long time. Jim's n-tier paper discusses this in more detail as well.

> extended meta data

The Visual FoxPro database container only gets you so far. A number of the 3rd party frameworks incorporate a data dictionary that goes beyond VFP's DBC. These data dictionaries can be used for things like defining validation, table look ups, data driving captions, tooltip text, input masks etc. Typically they save a lot of time during development and reduce maintenance because you only have to set them up once in the data dictionary and then the application uses them everywhere.

> controls directly bound to data or to objects

When controls are directly bound to data the user interface of the application is physically tied to an underlying data model. If COM/DCOM access to data is on the horizon or required now, then directly binding to data is not an option for you. This can also create problems if the data source changes.

> How do new developers get brought up the speed with the framework

This was really more of an issue to consider when deciding to develop an in-house framework for a larger development shop, but all of the 3rd party frameworks come with documentation and I believe training courses are available for all of them except Codemine and Visual Extend. (They may have courses, but I've never heard mention of them or seen anything on their web sites.) Even if you went with one of those two though, there are developers working with them that you could possibly hire for training or at least get some help from.

Jim has another paper on his web site that talks about framework design that will also be helpful to you.

Just to be sure, you do know that my company makes one of these frameworks, which obviously makes me extremely biased towards them right?

Feel free to call me if you want to discuss this in person.