Exactly. As someone else stated in this thread, the M$ statement that VFP is the best positioned tool for the middle tier of n-tier development is fluff and crap. While the statement in itself is true why not state the whole story and market it as such:

"If you are looking at small desktop apps to large-scale enterprise solutions that are data-centric then VFP is the way to go. VFP is the only tool in the VS suite that can be at any level of n-tier development. It's DBC's and DBF's can be a backend, it can create COM servers for the middle tier and it can also be used for the front end. VFP can be used for the entire application or the front end to other data sources like SQL-Server, Oracle, etc or any combination in between. Also, for data-centric applications, no matter what the back end is, nothing can beat VFP's data managment capabilities and speed."

Now I know the "they won't market VFP over VB" arguement but what I don't understand is if a developer decides to buy VFP over VB, what's really the difference to M$'s bottom line? In fact wouldn't it be better for M$ to push more VB people to VS?

In fact, it's been stated that some non-VFP types are starting to discover VFP's capabilities and using it in a limited capacity. But this is after 3 major releases of VFP and 2 of VS. Not exactly what I'd call great marketing. It's getting better but is just scratching the surface, IMHO, and has a long way to go...like M$ staff making the above statement. Wouldn't that be nice?

Cheers,

>Colin,
>
>I agree. Until MS pushes current VB, C++, whatever users as well as users new to MS fold, to VFP for data centric applciation development - or at least gives it equal footing with Access, VB, I will continue to believe the "VFP is slowly dying" threads. I SINCERELY WISH IT WERE NOT SO!
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>The problem that Craig (apparently) and others fail to see is that all the improved marketing of VFP is by the VFP group to the VFP community (notwithstanding and ad or two here and there in VB magazines). While any marketing is better than none - the problem lies in VFP's "positionining" in the minds of MS Brass across other groups and products. Ask the Office people or even the SQL people and you will either not hear about VFP at all, or you will be told as I was recently by the East Coast grand pubah for SQL Server, and I quote as best I remember ... "Yeah ... everytime we try to kill Fox, the developers scream .. so we'll keep it hanging around for awhile I guess"
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>That is as clear a statement as I've ever heard to illustrate exactly how MS as a WHOLE feels about VFP. If R. Green and the team want to market, they need to start with their own company. As long as Office people, and NT people, and SQL people, etc. have and SPREAD the attitude that VFP is dying on the vine, VFP will never be able to increase user base significantly - and as you pointed out, Colin, it is those voices that are heard by industry decision makers.
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>I mean - get real! If you're a non-technical VP trying to make a decision and you are presented with this choice by MS:
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>1) the product that everybody is using, that we recommend, that is our flagship, that we put most of our effort into, etc, etc, etc
>2) a good product that is primarily targeted for legacy applications and the user base that has been using it forever
>
>what would you choose?
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>Ken
>
>
>>IMHO, not really. I think Fox developers still working in the 2.x world are more than aware of VFP and haven't made the switch because they can't, not because they don't want to. Mostly, because of things like continuing to support legacy apps, the company or client they work for still has outdated hardware and O/S's, etc. It's more important, IMHO, to market VFP to new developers, non-VFP developers and even more importantly to market it to the decision makers who aren't technically knowledgable in development languages and make their decisions based on what "seems" to be the best solution.