>>Just to add my 2 cents worth. A couple of years ago, I was seriously questioning the time I new that I'd have to invest to learn 3.0 when it came out. If you think the rumors are bad now, then they were worse. Although we all may not be overly happy at M$ for their apparent lack of effort with VFP, I think that we as VFP developers are on far more firmer ground today. I believe that it was Roxanne, on her commentary about DevCon that stated that there are companies out there having problems with PowerBuilder and Delphi apps and are looking again at FoxPro as a viable solution. To brighten you all up a little, not all companies shun FoxPro. I can look in the Sunday employment section to find enough VFP positions to know that I don't have to worry should I lose my current full-time job (writing a huge medical analysis app in guess what....VFP 5.0). My independent work has just signed on as a sub to an insurance company rebuilding an app in guess what....VFP 5.0. Clearly everyone
>>on this board is working with FoxPro so I think that we are all going to be around for some time to come. Although M$ has made our marketing efforts more difficult, I find that I can usually overcome these and get a client to see that the minimal expense of VFP, when compared to other per user licensing arrangements, and the proven technology of Rushmore far outweigh the comments that they might make. We may not quite yet be standing on cement, but at least it's not the quicksand of a few years ago.
>>
>>Steve Despres
>
>You are lucky that you are not in Seattle. It is MSFT territory, VB and Access are
>the tools. There are some companies that are still using VFP but just very
>small ammount. My friend was for 4 month looking for the VFP position and found
>FoxPro 2.6 one. This company has MAC application, but it will not be VFP6.O for MAC.
>
>What is still unclear, what is VFP plate in future. The best database engine? Last year
>it was about 2000 people at DevCon, this year - 1300. MSFT FoxPro team for about
>15 days did not post any message after DevCon at their Web site.
>
>I am working for a company that does huge database telemenagment application written
>in FoxPro 2.6. One new module was written in VFP and is run by using WinExec.
>Well, it will be greate to reuse a lot of code and build compenents that can use
>power of Windows DNA. But technology is moving very fast, VFP5 components do not fit
>very well to the newest technooly, well, VFP6 will fit, but by this time technology
>will be changed again. And VB will be always a head of FoxPro. And SQL will be
>much easy to maintain, cheaper and eventually will be part of Windows.
>
>And where will be place for FoxPro?

Alexander,

I think that VFP will now continue to have a future, for some time to come. Again, just a couple of years ago, that might not have been true, but I think that M$ knows that it must continue to support it. I'm in the Washington DC area where much of the work is for the government. It's easy for officials who don't know anything about programming or development tools to simply go with the flow so there is a lot of VB and Access floating around here too. For those officials who do know though, I think that VFP could at least get some attention before a decision is made.

The current project that I am on is a port of a Fox 2.6 app. Why is VFP being used? Because we all know that the database engine is the best bang for the buck. One day I'm sure it'll move to C++ or some such thing but it'll NEVER be done in VB and certainly not Access.

Steve