Jane,

I used Visual Promatrix 5 & 6 through most of 1998 and found it really boosted my productivity. Since you are asking, here is my experience:

First, if you are not using any framework, then any commercial framework will give you a dramatic increase in productivity. Each one of them contains thousands of hours of code that you just don't have to do yourself.

Having said that, no framework offers instant productivity. Instead of spending time writing code, you spend time learning the framework. The difference is, of course, that learning the framework is much easier and faster than writing it yourself.

Promatrix concentrates on RAD-type stuff, heavy on builders and a data dictionary. It also replaces much VFP functionality with its own (which eventually became intolerable to me). I like the RAD stuff, so I liked VPM. They also have a very strong developer community. However, I found that once I started extending it, the payoffs began to diminish rapidly.

Lots of people are talking about Visual Maxframe these days. I saw Drew Speedie's presentation at Devcon and one thing I can say for sure is that he is a very systematic and abstract thinker - something I like. However, I saw much more labor in setting up his forms that I could tolerate. OTOH, word on the street is that Maxframe is the kindest framework out there for those of who insist on extending and modifying.

Eventually I found that I was much more interested in RAD than business objects, so I went against conventional wisdom and wrote my own framework which concentrates entirely on RAD stuff -- I hate doing "clerical" stuff like assigning properties to textboxes on forms.

Finally: I've never heard anyone say they regretted purchasing a commercial framework or that they did not get their money's worth. I met a couple of developers at DevCon who always buy them all. Even if they don't use each one, they get plenty of ideas and work features of one into another.


Hope this helps, good luck in your decision...