If I had a voice into what was being planned for VFP 8 Here is my totally incomplete wish list....

embedded smtp controls
embedded ftp controls
embedded imap controls - not pop3
like the xmltocusor() etc.

save to mem, would create xml files not .mem file and restore from mem would read by xml files. into memory, no xml files into cursors.

Without having to open up IE, give the ability to read a prefdefined web page, and have a html parser to extract the important data from inside it.

The sql upsizing wizard should be able to read whatever odbc / dsn records are stored on the machine, and then give the ability to upsize to anything which is connected to that machine.- not limiting the upsizing to MSsql only. (I know I am dreaming here)

What I am thinking about is, because VFP is now out of the .NET. in order for VFP to survive, it needs to meet a specific function not currently met by other MS produts.

VFP could become, not only a network, desktop application, but it could be used a hub, in an enterprise, collecting, extracting data, from all sorts of different datasoruces, and publishing back to the users, in the form of html, xml, sql, etc.
i.e. if you get an email daily with an attachment, of say an execell file, that file has say inventory on it. Your job, is to trap that email, convert it to a sql server, and publish it on the web. While that is acheivable, today, the amount of aftermarket addins, to get it working, is mindblowing. while if VFP could read an email, then the rest of the conversation would be done, automatically.

Same thing with a newly published ftp file, a supplier could update their inventory, or price list file daily, on their only ftp server, VFP could then, check for the update say every few hours, and extract it, and republish it in whatever format was necessary...

It could be that I am the only one, who has these types of requirements to deal with daily, but I dont think so. Reading the posts here, it appears, that data is comeing across our desks all the time, in various formats, and we all need to consume that data, and republish on a regualr basis.

Please comment

Bob Lee