John,

>>- Quickly develop database apps
>I can do that in VB

Definitely not without inheritance, or else the quality of the apps are low. Experience in the fields learn otherwise. There are many folks arround here who have prove they can develop an database app much and much faster than any compatetive product. You may scream that VB will have inheritance, but it certainly takes years before that new feature really becomes use well in the VB language. There is a steep learning curve to take for most developers. Until now VB developers are unable to use visual inheritance.

Bottom line. I will be able to develop a database application much faster in VFP than you in VB. Not even that, my application will be more complete as a result of my standard framework.

>>- Royalty free runtime distribution (compared to SQL licences), making it a very cheap solution and reachable for smaller clients.
>I can do that in VB with Jet/MSDE

Both Jet and MSDE are not optimized for more than 5 users. Try to develop applications with a few gig in it and about a 10 - 100 users.

>>- No DBA needed, it's easy to install and maintain in LAN environments.

Installing and maintaining ODBC and all the MDAC updates, is certainly not painless. SQL server definitely needs an administrator. Even if SQL 7 requires less mainenance, keep in mind that SQL server is still in minority. There far more ORACLE servers than SQL servers. Again don't have the attitude that the client should switch database servers, because you're a VB programmer and you can only develop applications for SQL-server. You're missing the boat john...

>WIth SQL 7, you really don't need a DBA. And, with Jet/MSDE, you definitely don't need a DBA

Jet is walking the dinasour, you've got to come with something more original.

>>- On Lan environments it often is faster than any other (R)DBMS solution.
>I Don't know about that. Unless you have benchmarks, you cannot prove this statement. It is pure conjecture.

John, wether you like it or not. It is the truth. It's in the differences between c/s and LAN database. The difference in architecture between VFP and Jet is clearly an advantage in favour of VFP when it comes to performance. C/S solutions can't cache data at the OS level and Jets architecture leads to less performance when searching trough tables. I think it is proven that VFP is faster in LAN environments for most application. I you don't think so, prove it. It is you who is saying that VFP has no advantage, not me. Don't twist the argument please..

>>- On runtime compiling programs (Or using the VFP language in a Command Window Emulator)
>So what? The VB debugging environment in many ways, is superior to Fox's. At least I can debug COM components in VB...

Who said something about debugging ? I can let the user write programs, develop reports and ad-hoc queries without any licence. Can you do this with VB ?

>>- You can still develop DOS, UNIX, MAC and Win16 applications in the FOX language.

>So... I can drag out an old version of Basic and write a DOS app. Is this a real advantage? I don't think so...

Yes, this is an advantage when you've to support older systems. Even now I have clients which are best helped with DOS applications, because of the TOC and the trouble that the Windows environment brings. Not all users are helped with Windows. And definitely don't have the attitude that Unix and Mac users should switch to Windows.

>>- Quickly migrating old DBASE apps toward fox.
>So... Do you really think there is a big market for this? If there are old apps being migrated, I would bet a lot are bypassing Fox in favor of something else..

Like what ? Investing useless time in developing an terrible buggy application in VB/Jet with the performance of a 386/20 Mhz running Windows NT ??


>>- The xBase language provides DML commands that have no direct SQL equivalent and are far faster than any SQL solution. (SEEK, SET RELATION, SET KEY, SCAN, etc)
>I can do record by record operations in T-SQL. I can also do record by record operations in ADO.

Please give me the T-SQL syntax to search the upperboss of an employee like the following VFP command does

DO WHILE Employee.boss # 0 AND SEEK(Employee.boss,"Employee","Emp_id")
ENDDO

As for ADO, I seem to remember you can't skip backwards and is terribly slow.

>>Do need to go any further ??

>Yes. You will need to find that one thing that can't be done in anything but Fox.

- Using marco's, Compiling on the fly without having any MS licences.
- Developing database applications that are not depended on other add-ons which can cause version conlficts.
- When developing VFP applications you'll be sure that maintaining and upgrading is a piece of cake. When I look at the VB environment and see all the dinasour technologies and incompatabilities in the past. It does not give me a comfortable feeling.

>Sorry...

No, it's my my turn to say sorry.

Walter,