Craig,

My 2c/ worth after reading all this, as someone old to FPD but new to VFP.

Why I love Fox:

1) Native SQL SELECT. Does VB have this now? Last I heard you had to build strings. What a pain. And Fox is so fast!

2) Macros. Yes they are sinful, like chocolate, but wisely used they are wonderful. And they differentiate.

3) Always took the command window for granted, but don't know what I'd do without it. Surprised VB doesn't have it yet.

4) Show inheritance. I think the color and font change are most dramatic, but also show one thing more substantial.

5) And of course it does all the stuff the other tools do.

We want to hear how it went. Good luck.

Alex


>>>Microsoft is doing a presentation here in SLC in June called "Microsoft Development Tools A-Z." I will be doing the presentation on VFP and will have about 10-15 minutes. My only requirement is that I end up with a COM object at the end of the presentation. That'll take about two minutes. Any ideas on what I can do to fill the rest of the time?
>>
>>Thought about this a little over the weekend, and came up with what I consider to be VFP's greatest feature when it comes to COM programming: the command window.
>>
>>I would show how easy it is to develop your COM server as a VFP class, test and debug as a VFP class, and then compile into COM server with confidence that your object already works, and the only thing you'll really have to debug through COM is DCOM instanciation, and security issues.
>>
>>Show how easy it is to instanciate a VFP class (and then a COM server) in the command window, and test it interactively, using ? to show output.
>>
>>oCust = CREATEOBJECT("MyCustomer")
>>?oCust.GetCustXML(10101)
>>
>>and then, compile into COM server:
>>
>>oCust = CREATEOBJECT("MyApp.MyCustomer")
>>?oCust.GetCustXML(10101)
>>
>>Show how easy it is to test other COM and automation servers (not written in VFP) in VFP, using the command window, by showing functionality interactively:
>>
>>oXMLDOM = CREATEOBJECT("Microsoft.XMLDOM")
>>oXMLDOM.Load("c:\somexmldoc.xml")
>>oNode = oXMLDOM.SelectSingleNode("MyXMLNode")
>>?oNode.XML
>>
>>VFP doesn't have much of an advantage over the other VS tools when it comes to the kinds of COM servers it can build (in fact, it is overtly disadvantaged in many areas), but I think it has a huge advantage in the arena of testing and development. Show it off.
>
>Thanks for the idea. I'll put it in the pile with everything else. I'll decide in the next couple of weeks exactly what I'll be doing.