Hi John,

I have PB 7 and haven't noticed that but I've never worked with Delphi.

>Hi Mark,
>
>I dabbled with Delphi a few years back and had to modify a Powerbuilder 3 app a while back. I would stay away from both: Inprise seems to be a bit unstable as a company and Powerbuilder is a real pig in resources and not very flexible in a distributed, heterogenous environment.
>
>>
>>This is not an intrusion. Your comments are welcome.
>>
>>I agree that the tool should surface but I'm considering the fact that any of them could do the job well. It's true that I tend to be personally biased towards VFP, but the lack of Microsenthusiam and the large executables concern me. We've all dealt with the weak MS showing, but the executables can only reasonably be resolved with a web interface which management does not seem to keen on doing for these type of projects.
>>
>>Hence my exploration of alternatives.
>>
>>Do you have any experience with the other tools?
>>
>>>Hi Mark,
>>>
>>>Pardon my intrusion, but I think a point that Christof was leading to is that there are a lot of questions that need to be answered before a tool selection can be made. If this is a development project, then I would think you could go a long way into the design and let the design models surface the proper tool.
>>>
>>>>
>>>>The app in question is the first of a series of apps which is data-centric as all of our apps are. Currently we use VFP-VFP,VFP-SQL,VFP-Oracle and have a number of developers with expertise in each. My background is 10+ years with Fox both Windows and Mac, although that is not the main criteria at this point.
>>>>
>>>>This particular project is a rewrite in a sense but it will be changing a stand-alone VFP EXE to a client/server model. This is a watershed in my mind as we need to establish future direction.
>>>>
>>>>Web use is not an issue as that is handled by another group with JAVA, etc.
>>>>
>>>>Ease of maintainance, speed of data access, speed of processing strings are very important.
>>>>
>>>>Native code generation is not a big deal.
>>>>
>>>>The main issues here are what many of us are concerned about. Since VFP/FPW seem relegated to small business use, is it wise to dedicate a medium-sized company's resources to a second string player (no matter how technically sound or superior)? Qualified programmers are increasingly hard to find and there's a persistent threat of 'this may be the last release'.
>>>>
>>>>We have a great deal invested in Fox and I would be one of the last people to aid in it's shelving, but is it not wise to look at alternatives? Currently the biggest contenders are VFP, VB and Powerbuilder.
>>>>
>>>>What do you think?
>>>>
>>>>Thanks for your attention.
>>>>Mark