>Well I've heard of many getting lots of mileage out of the simple fact that VFP is already in the shop by virtue of VS being there. Apparently that...
>a) surprised the listener;
>b) left him/her with little argument *against* VFP, since any such argument was invariably based solely on the VFP is dying rumour (and not at all on technical issues of any kind).

No doubt. I just wonder the extent to which that will still be true. And to the extent (hopefully increasing) that shops buy MSDN rather than VS, VFP will be in there, so the negative is somewhat mitigated. It is really hard to quantify this.

>Business is data and data is business. I've read one of the VB gurus saying "I don't do data". Good for him. I guess he's found a nice niche market (probably supporting other VBers would be my guess).

He is in the vast minority. 90 something percent of VB developers do data according to our research, and that has been the case for several years.

>I'd bet that, sooner or later, .NET will have to grow to have data integrated into its "languages". That's why I'd like to see VFP pushed into it now *with* all of the attributes of Fox of course.

I think if you asked the VS.NET guys if data is integrated they would say yes. They have a different model. VB has always relied on somebody else (ODBC, DAO, RDO, ADO) to do the data lifting for it. Prior to VB.NET, to do data you had to fire up an object. It is now more seamless to make another call into the Framework, so to that extent data is more integrated. And from what I can tell, the VB/VS guys are happy with the way they do data, and so are their customers.

Robert