My experience is that unless you're providing something extraordinary, it's the database that gets (and deserves) the attention once you're into massive data volumes. The rest is a commodity exercise to get useful stuff in and out.

RDS provides more than just cross platform: it also prevents trails of PHI temp files being spread in the wild by unsuspecting VPN users, or sneaks saving 23,000 records onto personal devices for their own convenience, like at Accretive. RDS helps keep everything inside your firewall unless people are deliberately negligent.

>>If you're an I.T. director you going to waste money on a bunch of windows server licenses when you don't need them anymore? MS can try to push Terminal server and Windows Sever licenses but that combination to me seems like a lost cause.

Windows continues to dominate on desktop- which means most of the analysis of your purported data warehouse, since few analysts can work with small screens. Unless you're advocating Macs via Razor or a Safari app at the cost of multiplying complexity, or one of the new Samsung phone desktop trick shots: Windows rules. I can't think of a healthcare client with anything except PC on desktop- inside their firewall. But outside? Now there are different cues, especially if users need to query data or have indeterminate devices at home.

>>If they have 2,000+ users it just cost them an extra 1/4 million bucks in license fees and you're going to be maintaining a pool of Windows Servers and user accounts too.

As opposed to what? What's your nirvana for managing 2000 users without a domain server, user accounts and groups, and supervision?

>>If it was me I'd be pushing SQL Server and all the .NET development tools. SQL Server 2017 runs on Windows and Linux.

You're talking as if VFP and SQL Server are mutually exclusive. And to use NET on Linux- sheesh, a Windows Server license is trivial if you're working with a huge data warehouse with 2000 users. And with that many users- if the company heeds latest research re productivity and lets people work from home, how will you prevent PHI confetti in temp folders in the wild?

>>But who wants you to develop an app for them using a language that is no longer supported?

As far as I know, VC++14.1 (released in March 2017) should be supported for a wee while yet. As for the 4GL- it's just a nominative form, same as EDTASM once was for assembly. Who cares if the original interpreter is gone if you can compile to VC++14.1 . Surely you wouldn't argue that gasoline is obsolete because it comes from dinosaurs that went extinct ages ago?

>>They will just move on to the next consultant who uses the latest tools. Sure you can run across a client that is clueless or doesn't care - but that is doing them a dis-service by using non-supported development tools with an ever-shrinking pool of developers. And then there is the matter of what people want - and now days what they want is a browser app, not a desktop app. If you're trying to score a new client or keep an old one - and tell them you're going to give them a new Windows desktop app written in VFP that they can hit via RDP -- the competition for that contract is going to eat you alive.

Of course your prospects depend on matching the client's IT policies if you're bidding for work on their software or database. But if you're selling licenses for apps that do useful work or are contracted to provide a service, your anecdote doesn't apply. Especially if the client already requires users to access apps via RDS for privacy and other reasons.