It seems as though you are making arguments to help support your organization maintaining the status quo. That is why I don't work in the Public sector at all.
When I've sat around and discussed technology in the past couple months, the change from VB6 to VB7 vs the stability between VFP6 and VFP7 has been a nonissue. The main question has been what technology would afford us the best chance of creating world class apps. The possibilities of .Net point in that direction. Maintaining the status quo is not an option as the people I deal with all relize that we have to look at other tools to be able to grow our company.
Pf
>>What does forward-compatible mean?
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>Programs written in VFP6 will run in VFP7 without problems. FPW was not forward compatible with VFP, VFP5 was forward compatible with VFP6.
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>>If you work in such a conservative environment, what would convince the powers that be that it would be worth it to upgrade to VFP7 from 6?
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>I make that decision. It's not a matter of dollars as much as it is a matter of a significant change in paradigm going from VB6 to VB7. When I referred to changing to .NET I meant the University as a whole, not the small part I make decisions for.
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>>PF
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>>>One more thing - here in a conservative environment (NT4 and Office97) I think .NET will be slow to catch on because of the percieved security issues and other unknowns. That makes the choices for new development either VFP or VB6. Since VB6 is not forward-compatible in the way VFP7 is, VFP has a distinct advantage.
(On an infant's shirt): Already smarter than Bush