No argument with the current functionality of WinDev from your description. Years ago FoxPro was probably the best tool for databases (circa 1990's). Many developers moved to it and was happy -- had a good company (Fox Software) and a good set of developers maintaining the code. Then it was bought by Microsoft and development continued. Moved to be Windows based. All good. Enhancements came with every release. Then VFP 6.0 hit. Many developers was quite pleased with the platform. More releases of VFP came -- 7.0, 8.0 and 9.0. But many developers did not purchase the upgrades. So VFP was discontinued -- did not meet the revenue expectations of the company (Microsoft). Maybe other reasons also contributed. But any product has to generate revenue for it to be continued.

Now we have WinDev. It is sort of like Fox Software back in the day - lots of features and ahead of the competition. Will another big company come along and buy it? Don't know, but if the big company made the owners a great offer they would be hard to say no to. Then if the product does not meet the expectations of the big company sometime in the future for revenue generation -- will they discontinue it? This is the problem.

I started out with FoxPro 2.0 DOS; it was great. Now have VFP 9.0 and still working with it. It is still great. Yes I have to build everything you describe as plug-in-play; but then that what developers have to do. And to me that is the fun of code. Programming is not just putting in widgets and 'wiring' them, it is code writing to accomplish tasks. Sure VFP offers its own set of widgets to drop on forms; I like enhancing the base widgets to get more.

I don't want to migrate to another niche application development platform. To me the risk is too much to have to migrate again. If I migrate, I would do so with the open source tools out there. These should have the longevity to stay and many developers working to ensure their continued success.

Just my two cents USD...

Greg