Jim:

>"Niche" may have a bit of cachet, but it has other implications that make it less than desireable, at least in my opinion. Like think 'small', think 'shrinking', think 'out of the mainstream', think 'legacy style'.

Its a matter of perception. For your 90% of small/medium size businesses, VFP can do a very good job. For your Blue Chips, it probably can too but, the security/scalability of heavyweight back-ends is the order of the day.

Where I perceive VFP as being "niche" is actually in its capabilities. How many other "packages" do data, have a great programming language, great string handling, have the speed, do the Web, are as fast to develop in etc., etc.,

When you look at at this way, it is one of the only, if not the only tool out there that can do all these things and do them very well. Therefore, you can put it into a niche on these grounds alone - because it is out on its own in terms of its feature set.

Don't mis-understand me Jim, I am a software developer in a non-software business that I own. I started out life as an insurance broker in the late '70's. I now own/run a taxi-insurance underwriting agency (a niche <s>) and our heavily thrashed systems are all FPW/VFP. The insurers with whom we deal are constantly amazed at what we do with our IT. They think we have an IT department working round the clock. In reality, there is only me and the Fox - perception is all.

Irrespective of what we know about the Fox and what it can do, the rest of the world have a different perception. Changing that perception can be likened to making water run up-hill.

Best

-Gary