George,

>>snip<<

>Well, we can hope.< g > Seriously, I'd really like to hear what Ed R. has to say about this. He's the guy that can give better insights to the ramifications of something like this.

Ed's too darn smart. *G*

>In some ways, component design utilizing dynamic linking makes things much easier to deal with. Back in FPW all my applications were APP files that were started by a single EXE. The EXE contained all the system level services (opening tables, printing reports, handling the command bar, handling searches, etc.) required by the apps. The apps accessed the services by utilizing dynamic linking. These (the services) were included in the Project Manager for the apps, but marked as excluded. If a change was required in one of these services, all I had to do was re-compile the main EXE and turn over one file to impact all the applications.
>
>N-Tier offers a whole new realm of possibilities in this area, since it can potentially allow us to interact with other applications, which may or may not be based on the VFP development platform.

Right. Alan Schwartz, formerly of FoxFire! fame had a nifty little trick he used to link multiple .APP files. He's call a dummy procedure the first one which would return to the calling EXE, ehich would then call the 2nd through the nth. By so doing FoxPro registered all the procedures and functions and knew where to find them. It was the "then" version of today's DLL essentially.

Best,

Best,


DD

A man is no fool who gives up that which he cannot keep for that which he cannot lose.
Everything I don't understand must be easy!
The difficulty of any task is measured by the capacity of the agent performing the work.