In the 15aug97 issue of Computer Contractor (VNU Business Publication), a magazine targeted at contractors in IT industry in the UK, I came across an article "The Need For Speed", which attempted to address the speed issues in client/server enviromnents.

Unfortunately the author attempted to make comparisons qualitatively using VFP (and xbase) mainly to illustrate a file-base system and a client/server based system.

Terms like "The toy databass like Visual Foxpro and the Xbases are file-server based. Ture industrial-strength systems, on the other hand ..."

In making its point about file-based databases, it mentioned "to find one match out of 100k orders, all 100k of them have to passed over the network from the server to the client (workstation)".

The above is just an example of how non-Foxpropeople misunderstand Foxpro in particular, and the suitability rule (as in horses for courses) in general.

Another issue: In an client's Oracle backend environment that I am working in at the moment, we needed to extract reports from a longchar field. I voluntered VFP has a quick and easy way to extract the reports, but the others prefer Access. Why? "Because if you are not here, nobody else knows VFP" came the reply! Sadly, I think to an extent, the client is right! At other customer sites, they usually say "Foxpro who?"

The reason of the lack of publicity at MS is very clear. When you sell SQL Server, you get paid on a per client, or per seat basis. The more installations you have, the more money MS receives. Now, in the case of the developer's version of VFP, the developers buys a copy, and that is all MS is going to receive, regardless of the number of copies of applications the developer sells in the product's version-lifetime.

You can argue about boosting the image of MS, profiling Win95 etc etc, but at the end of the day, it is the monies flowing into MS's corporate coffers that counts (to MS, I mean).



TPL