Hi Mark,

>My department is now at a crossroads.
>
>All of our really successful systems are written in Foxpro but I am now the only VFP programmer left in our department and am surrounded by VB developers.
>
>We are just about to plan for providing web enabled applications and management look as if they may end up giving all this intresting work to the VB developers. This is in spite of them being sympathetic to VFP because it has been such a successful product for them compared to their experience with VB.
>
>I need some good sales ammunition to fire in support of VFP in a meeting that is to take place in a few days time.
>
>I need to demonstrate why VFP is better at working with the web than the opposition so I need ideas for any sales aids folks can come up with.
>
>Ideally I need to see a strong argument that has already been written in favour of VFP on the Web and some working examples showing how easily this can be achieved in VFP.
>
>Also I need to know if the crux of the argument I am putting forward is accurate.
>
>I will be arguing that if the department is planning to move towards .Net then it should be delivering applications in VFP 7.00 now to take advantage of those portions of .Net that exist in VFP 7.00 (I know VFP is not going to be in the CLR but I dont think that is an issue)


You can use the arguments that creating the new apps in VB6 would be developing in obsolete language, and doing so in VB.NET so far would be developing in unproven language in it's first OOP generation.


>
>I am very hazy on this whole area. Am I right in thinking that VFP 7.00 has good support for SOAP built in or is this only possible by using a third party product like WestWind SOAP manager.
>
>Where does XML figure in all this, can I use that as a selling point. The only advantage I have is that the VB guys seem to be as ignorant as me in these areas.



Take the arguments right from Microsoft:
http://shop.microsoft.com/Referral/Productinfo.asp?siteID=10950

Build high performance desktop, client/server, and Web database applications with the Microsoft® Visual FoxPro® 7.0 database development system. Employ its powerful data engine to manage large volumes of data, its object-oriented programming to reuse components across applications, and its built-in XML support to quickly manipulate data.

Visual FoxPro 7.0 gives developers the flexibility to build all types of database applications and to build and consume COM+ components and Web Services.

Integrated XML support allows you to build interoperable applications and components through the ability to represent Visual FoxPro data as XML and to import XML data into Visual FoxPro tables.


>I think this thread could become an important one for all of us because these are the sort of arguments that VFP developers are going to have to win somehow the world over.
>
>All help most gratefully received.