Mike, I've seen VFE through John Harvey. You cant' get a better salesman now can you :)

Having purchased VPM, and stopped using it, I can say that your product is far superior in numerous ways. Your UI is easier to modify, lookups are done better and folowing a old standard of CodeBook is better than trying to create a new one and not tell the world about it.

Granted CB ver 3 had limitations and John says that your ver 6 deviates from CB just as MM did. Hind sight is also 20/20.

My initial memory of VFE5 was that you followed the steps of Data, BizObj, user Interface. It is hard to work on a bizobj without the data underneath? My method to the madness is that the design comes first, the data may change underneath as proto typing is done and then the interface is decided upon.

To me the BizObj is the rules of the business that the data contains. Separating the concepts is the difference between VB & VFP. They can't and we can! From John it seems that ver 6 can do so also.

You have a great product. Hands down the wizards really guide the developer to acomplishing a ton of work in about 5 hours. That's what it's all about. I'm sure that VFE is more than a RAD tool. It is a FrameWork! It's looks to be robust and developer friendly. A great choice for developers who are looking for a jump in and run with type of product.

__Stephen Russell
Memphis VFP User Group

>Hi Steve,
>
>>> VFE is similar in their first version of the 5 product. I have seen that the newer version ?? 6 ?? is improved, but I like MM better. I being a control freak like that fact that I want to do things in a certain way.
>
>VFE is similar to VPM in that they both have a UI and a data dictionary, but VFE is first and foremost, a framework. We have a number of customer who never go into the VFE UI after they use it to jump start a project.
>
>>> VFE is data centric. Everything revolves around the data. You have to spend an exorbortant amount of time doing that. Yes it's leveraged on BIG projects, but I don't think that it's versitile enough to do big app work.
>
>I don't like this data centric term. Form centric I think applies very well to VPM, Codemine and MaxFrame, but VFE, Codebook and Mere Mortals aren't really data centric, they're based on business objects.
>
>As far as the size of apps created with VFE goes, a lot of people use it on turn & burn apps, but we have a number of customers that are also using it on HUGE projects as well and it fits the bill quite well. A lot of people think just because VFE has a UI and can generate a large percentage of your apps that you can only use it as a RAD tool, but it is a complete framework and can be used as such just as much or more than any of the other frameworks.
>
>>> It is amazing how many times I see in threads "You don't need to purchase /any product/ that you cant write yourself. That any product is realy just a list of Frameworks, Audit control, Data Backups, Data Tool Kits. Sure you could write any of the above list, but why? To save 200 or 500 dollars? That is a poor business decission! Your time to write one of those applications has to be greater than it it to purchase one.
>
>That's right on the money, literally.