No more workareas, Set Database or Create Session. No more ambiguous data management.
No more housekeeping (close data, etc.) The objects manage the data they represent.
Encapsulated Data.
Sharing data among forms is much easier.
Almost complete control over if, and under what conditions, data gets written to disk.
Flush is now granular, right down to the rowset level.
Programmatic control over login.
Rowset-level events that fire for appends, edits, changes, abandons and deletes.
Field-level events that fire before datalink and after changes.
Explicit control over the datalink itself.
Finally! - the ability to freeze or refresh datalinked controls at will.
Morphing.
Filter Mode
Scalability.
Business rules move away from the User-Interface.
Field level custom methods.
Data-level validation.
"Live" calculated fields.
Heterogeneous data access (multiple data engines simultaneously)
and most important of all:
Object data - with all its benefits of reusability and inheritance.