Thanks for the info Hank! I appreciate it.

I had tried playing with it a few months ago and didn't make much headway. When I tried to convert a simple VFP program consisting of only one screen, it gave me errors when I tried to run it. Then for some reason I couldn't run Lianja at all. It would disappear when I tried to run it. I then uninstalled and reinstalled it but still didn't work.

I just recently picked it back up again and am trying again to see if I can make heads or tails of any of it.

Thanks!



>> If by "most of my code" you mean processing code, munging data and the like, yes that's pretty much the case.

How your UI will import depends: the Lianja UI is designed around small applications as parts of a large project. The UI, as you know from exploring it, is built around pages that have sections. And the sections are designed to be able to run on the web as well as desktop. Some UI redesign is likely to be required. And while menus can be created to work like VFP menus, that makes much less sense in Lianja apps than in VFP.

We have small apps running in production, One for a few years and another for about a year. We have 3 apps waiting to pop in the pipeline. These are all add-ons to our existing VFP app (quite large, running against MSSQL). Our 5-year plan is to move the large app over to Lianja, running on web (Electron on desk to integrate with peripherals, Web, Android and iOS). Version 5, about to be released, will give us the flexibility we need to accomplish any UI stuff we need. Working with data against MSSQL is no issue, and in fact is either the same or simpler than VFP, depending on whether we're using SQLEXEC() (it's the same, except that it returns the # of records affected directly) or using a remote view (a Virtual Table in Lianja) which is easier than in VFP on several counts.

On the one hand, I've seen Lianja continually improve the importer to handle apps that don't import correctly. On the other hand, monolithic apps realistically are not going to run in Lianja. We had already, after 12 years or so with a typical VFP UI style, started making our forms work well in the Lianja UI style. This wasn't done for Lianja: it was done to make the UI work better for our users, helping them focus on what they need, while making the rest available but not in the way. So making the move for us will be quite easy. Where it won't is where we should have redesigned, but didn't because those parts of the application get less use (even though, or perhaps because, they are pretty advanced).

Lianja is to VFP9 as VFP3 was to FP 2.6: one builds on the other, and shifts the paradigm. In that sense, I think it's fair to say that Lianja is effectively VFP 10. There was much gnashing of teeth when VFP3 arrived (along with great cheering).

Lianja is like VFP9 in that it is a development and deployment platform for data and UI. However deployment now means serving web/mobile/Electron apps from a Cloud Server. It also includes its own SQL Server. So it's like VFP in being complete, only the definition of complete has changed, a lot. It also deploys to PhoneGap and Electron apps with no extra work on your part: fill in a few attributes and push a button. As I said: both products deploy, and what is included in deployment has changed, a lot.

Our decision to go with Lianja serves our vision for our company's product to be relevant in years to come. The domain (comprehensive retail inventory management) won't change much in that time. The ways of delivering apps, the expectations for UI, the devices used for access, and the ease of use required, are all changing. We made the decision that Lianja ticks all the right boxes for us. Whether it does for you has more to do with your vision for down the road than it does with anything else. There's no other product we've found that has all the pieces we need: the whole package is there. All that said, if I were looking at retirement in a few years rather than the health of the company 10 years down the road, I might look for an easier way that didn't tick all the boxes, where I could keep my monolithic app. In that case you might not want VFP 10, and that's legitimate.

Hank

PS: I'm a Lianja MVP. I made the choice for Lianja in my consulting practice in September, 2010, before the first beta came out. The vision was the right vision, the person who owned the company had at that time a 22-year record of delivering and was reasonable in discussion. I knew it would be a long slog, and at that time I didn't comprehend the complexity of the Lianja Stack -- I had figured 5 years, and it's 8 since the first beta. At my day job at DataWorks where I'm CTO we made the decision I think 3 years ago. We (my day job) are a Lianja ISV. Basically, for what some folks charge to deploy a single server, or maybe 4 depending, we have a license to deploy as many Lianja Cloud/SQL Servers as we wish, so long as they only run our code. Lianja plays the long game. As Recital, they have been delivering since 1988. They can afford the long game, and it's proving out, from our perspective. Lianja Cloud, initially on AWS, has also been announced. Push a button and your app is deployed on AWS, consuming resources only when used, scalable, secure, tenanted, etc. I haven't seen pricing. I expect it to be quite reasonable.

If you decide Lianja ticks your boxes, they are revamping the Forums to be learning-oriented. They have announced free Online training with short videos that cover a boatload of topics. In that sense, it's a good time to be making the move. Some of us (ahem) learned a lot through trial and error, some times mostly the latter. :)

If I've given you enough information to know whether Lianja ticks your boxes, I've met my goal.

hth,

Hank