>Perhaps I am expecting a bit much, but there *needs* to be more in the basic VFP books (Help especially).
>Some simpler examples which easily pop to mind:
>1) How do Timers really work in a mutli-tasking environment?
> - Do the pop at expiration regardless of who is in control, or do they only pop once the VFP issuing prog has resumed control?
> - Do they count only the time spent *in* the VFP program or is real elapsed time counted?
>2) How do buffers work in a networked environment?
> - Will I only see committed changes from other stations (and when) or will I see them as they build but before they TABLEUPDATE?
> - What about my buffers vis-a-vis other stations?
>3) How does locking work with
> - multi-sessions on one PC?
> - In a network where some apps use table buffering, some use row buffering and some use none?
> - Do the "old" commands like UNLOCK, FLUSH, etc operate the same on buffered tables?
> - Does SET REFRESH work for more than BROWSE?
>4) What is the precise "default" behaviour for each event of each control?
> - Which of them *can* be suppressed by NODEFAULT* and which of them happen regardless?
>5) If a ComboBox dropdown always has exactly 7 lines only, why not say so?

Those are valid questions, but honestly, those kinds of questions are answered
best by experience. Can you point to any full scale development product that
provides docs like that???

I know I try to document every idea or question that is raised with Web Connection
but even so there are a lot of things that you simply have to figure out on your
own. There are too many paths to solutions that make it impossible to find
into a book or manual (let alone trying to get some work developing done).

I think VFP fares much better in that respect than most others because tuning
is a lot easier than most other tools. Try digging into DAO and tuning the
engine for optimum performance. There's a lot more to it than optimizing
an index!


>Now I would like to know how third-party books can address these issues ACCURATELY? From what I have seen, the vast majority (all that I have read) are based on observation of usage, no doubt with intimate knowledge of the doc and the knowledgebase.
>But most of these issues are not the sort which can be answered strictly by observation - the perception will be accurate for a specific set of conditions but likely not for some other set. As I like to repeat... using observation alone I can "prove" that the sun revolves around the earth.

Uh, that's what 'experts' are for. But I have to be honest - there are more
worthless books out there than good ones and sadly the people who need to
buy a book are unlikely to be able to tell the difference between a good
book and bad one.

I think the problem you're faced with is due to the fact that the dev
products are changing so drastically and so quickly that it's hard to
become an expert anymore. Used to be if you knew FoxPro in DOS the transition
to Windows took some getting used to but you could transfer most of that
knowledge. That cycle was something like 6 years long. Now, we're not just
looking at a product but development platforms, networks, the Internet...

No magic answer, but look at what you can do today compared to back then
and with a lot less effort including not having to know all the tweaks.
Optimum applications always require tweaking, but it's also not required
for every application.


+++ Rick ---