Many Thanks Alex

I think thats great advice.

I will be using most of your points in my report:)




>>My department is now at a crossroads.
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>>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.
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>>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.
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>You already have several good answers. What is not clear to me is why if management has had good experience with VFP would consider changing. What does VB bring to a web app? Anything more than VFP? No. In order to use VB or VFP in the web you either need ISAPI to run a compiled EXE (VB or VFP) or run ASP calling a VFP or VB DLLs as Claude said). You could even mix and match and run some in VFP and call some written by the VB guys. It is all a matter of using the language that is more appropriate for each task.
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>What is the web experience or expertise of the VB guys? What's yours? Is the app data-based? What is the database experience of the VB guys? All of this is something management will have to deal with at the meeting.
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>OK. I may be nitpicking when I say that VB does not do web anymore than VFP does. VB guys might argue that they'd use VBS. OK. But VBS is not VB, just a subset. You can learn VBS syntax in a very short time as it is not that different from VFP syntax. In order to use data with VBS you need ADO. Do the VB guys know how to use it? It will be very easy to learn for you as it is similar to VFP in ways. What backpen will they use for data? VFP can use SQL Server and even Access (ugh) just like VB can.
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>Assuming the website will serve thin-clients (browsers), the client code will probably be not VBS but JavaScript. What advantage would the average VB guy have on that over you? None.
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>The short of it is: no need to antagonize the VB guys. Play on each language's strenghts and all of you may share on a piece of the action. In any case, teaching the VB guys a little VFP and learning a little VB or VBS yourself won't hurt.
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>HTH