Hi Mark..

First off, let me say that it was nice to see you again. The MVP summit was a great place to be: nice people, lots of good information, and typical Seattle weather!!< bg >..

I took one main impression away from the summit: if you are a MS tools developer, your future lies in .Net....period.

As for your comments about VFP, while I agree that it is not the red-headed step-child it once was, it is not the child that is heir-apparent to the throne either. The overwhelming focus was on .Net, what it means to the invidividual user and what it means to business.

This past week has caused me to do a lot of soul searching about VFP and the work that I will concentrate on over the next couple of years. If you asked me a year ago to develop an application that needed remote and web capability as well as interoperatbility with disparate devices, I would be left to wonder about all the pieces that would be required and further, how to make all those pieces fit and work together. Today, I see .Net has the workbench platform for developing those types of applications as well as apps that work in a LAN environment - the type of apps primarily developed with VFP/VB 6.

VFP is what it is, a nice tool for developing windows-based database applications. At the same time, .Net is the future and will be a nice tool for developing windows-based database applications. There was one primary message conveyed during the summit - .Net is the future. Eventually, SQL Server and Office will be built on the CLR as well as Visual Studio.

As for me, the choice is clear. I will conduct the same research and make the contributions that I did in introducing ADO to the VFP Community. My goal, to have resources available to the VFP developer who wants to migrate to .Net. For those that wish to stay in VFP, I wish them the best of luck and will leave it to others to continue the tradition of developing optimized tools and strategies for VFP. For those that wish to and/or need to transition to .Net, I want to help by providing resources from the VFP developers perspective that will make that transition much smoother.

I am proud to be a VISUAL FOXPRO MVP! IMO, one of the most "valuable" things a VFP MVP can do is to help blaze a trail for the VFP developer who wishes to migrate to .Net.

It's a brave new world! I am going to go grab the brass ring!

Regards,