Hi,

We are using InTouch from Wonderware as a man machine interface. The
product is excellent but the license fees are too high for logistical
programms in production.
That's why we started thinking about : Visual FoxPro or Visual Basic or ?

Puropose.
---------
User Friendly Screens allowing operators to do some inputs.
Integrate TouchScreens
Integrate Scanner device (COM port)
Integrate Bar code label printer (COM port)
Print Documents on a standard printer (locan and network)
Generate reports on - line (text + charts, pareto analyses, ...)
PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT : needs to be fast, and when i say fast ... i mean
fast !
Reliable !

Optional
--------
Communicate with InTouch over DDE.


Visual FoxPro seems to be a nice tool. Using the integrated database
possibilites. However in production we might be logging like 350.000
records a year (we plan to clean it up each year). Is this tool still
quick enough ?

I have read that one can integrate SQL Server (which has no probs with lots
of records), but dont you loose a lot of the integrated ease of programming
in Visual FoxPro then (since you dont use the FoxPro database possibilities
any more) ? Is it then wiser to use plain VB ?


Thx,
Gunther Recticel