Hi Alex,

I would start with the video Steve Ballmer made.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vfoxpro/prodinfo/ballmer.asp

Then the 2001 DevCon keynote video starring Ken Levy, et al.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vfoxpro/devcon300.asx

With VFP7 there isn't very much you can't do in VFP that you can do in VB. All the buzzwords apply (XML, COM+, distributed architecture.)

If he is frightened of using VFP's native data engine, SQL Server and Oracle work great (I'm probably not telling you something you don't already know.)

VFP7 is now part of an MSDN professional or higher subscription.

VFP7 does Web Services, does XML, interops great with .NET (and VFP7 isn't still beta.)

Some qualified VFP developers wouldn't hurt either <g>!

I'm sure others will jump in with more recommendations.

>Hello All -
>
>I don't want to make this a long, long post, so I will try to sum up the situtation.
>
>Overview: The head of IT at a medium size company in charge of an old FoxPro mission-critical application needs to determine the next plan regarding the application. The business (Insurance) is actually quite complex, and the current application was written by clowns how should not have been allowed near a keyboard (horrendous database layout, extremely poor code, etc.). He hears/reads all these great things in the papers and trade magazines (btw, he is NOT an IT guy by training/experience... he's actually from an Accounting background), about VB, Java, etc., and never sees anything about Visual FoxPro. At this point he figures Visual FoxPro is dead, "no brainer" to move to something else (even though his developers--if you could call them that--will be lost!
>
>What information (books? Articles? Etc.) do any of you know of that could help this guy realize that some very big Fortune 1000 firms still use Visual FoxPro successfully, and that he should at least consider a 1-2 year major "fix-up" of the existing application rather than a multi-million dollar 5 year rewrite?
>
>
>________________
>_____/ Regards,
>____/ al
>___/
>__/
>_/
>/