Well thought out and presented. You covered this side of this issue to a tee. Congrats.

Ed

>Hi Doug..
>
>I stopped to make a cup of tea while contemplating a response to your post...
>
>The lack of macro substitution is oft viewed as the achilles heel of .Net as far as a VFP developer is concerned. .Net does not have macro substitution. This is a fact that I cannot quibble with. Notwithstanding that fact, I will press on..
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>Macro expansion (ME) has always held a peculiar place. On one hand, folks have wanted Fox to be compiled. On the other hand, folks have come to rely on ME. Of course, the two represent mutually exclusive ideals. As for myself, I rarely use the & operator. In my experience, the most oft scenario macro exp. is used is in the construction of dynamic sql statements. The second most used scenario relates to xbase constructs like Replace, Select, etc... The third most relates to dynamic referencing of objects.
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>At this point, I would like to say that if somebody is comitted to using VFP/DBF data, then stay with VFP. It is a blinding flash of the obvious to see and know that nothing works better with VFP data than VFP. This analysis assumes that one is migrating to SQL Server (Which many VFP developers either have done or are in the processing of doing now...)
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>If you like dynamic SQL statements, stored procedures can build and execute dynamic SQL Statements just as easily as you can in Fox. From a code standpoint, your code is MUCH more readible and cleaner. An over-abundance of macro-expansion begins the slippery slope of unreadible and unmaintainable code. Further because your UI/Middle Tier components have a single interface (the stored procedure), this too lends to cleaner code.
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>With respect to macro expansion and the traditional xbase constructs, because it is not likely that one will be using VFP/DBF data in .Net, the fact that you are losing this becomes 100% irrelevant.
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>As for dynamic object referencing, macro-expansion is really not a good choice for this sort of thing. Yes it works. But, it is a VFP specific feature that can lock you into the Fox-Box. Using object pointers is a much cleaner way to deal with this issue.
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>With all of this in mind, I contend that Macro Expansion and the lack of it in .Net is not a weakness of .Net and is not a bar to the VFP developer wishing to make this migration. At best, it is a perceived limitation. This will be one of the issues I tackle in the coming months.. Somehow, the rest of the world has managed to get by without this singlular Fox Feature...
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>Do you really believe it is not worth the trouble to go to .Net? You couch things from the perspective of whether you can afford to make the move. I view things from the perspective of whether a VFP developer can afford to not at least plan for the move. Even if one does not feel that he will deliver applications in .Net for 12 months, the time to plan is now. Can you imagine the development talent firms will be looking for in 12 months? I think they will be looking for .Net talent.
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>This is a rare opportunity. It is a time when we, just like everybody else, can get in on the ground floor. IMO, the next 12 months may be the most critical of a person's career.