Walter,

I've always wondered about some of your prior arguments here. It now seems to me that your arguments are highly based on emotions.

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>Errr, replacement ? why ? VFP isn't going anywhere anytime soon. VFP has got some very unique characteristics when it comes to data handling. VS.NET is not going to change this. It is my honest believe that if you're looking for ultimate power off a dataengine VFP will be unbeatable for a lot of years to come. Maybe if you don't require a powerfull dataengine it may be an alternative, but why should you, if VFP serves you well, why abandon it ?<

VFP is going anywhere anytime soon??? I didn't know you were in a position to make that decision. Maybe you are not aware of the situation, being based in the Netherlands. VFP is the only computer product I know of where you have to go to a specific place (Hentzenwerke and now Amazon also) to buy books on the topic. VFP may be powerful, but it has been loosing major market share every year for at least the last 5 years. Even this year the number of VFP Devcons has shrunk. There has been a very serious decline in the number of VFP jobs in the US over the last 5 years also. Given these realities you have to seriously question the long term viability of the product.

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>This has nothing to do with VS.NET. CR can be intergrated into VFP very much the same way as with VS.NET.
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>As I posted before, If you're thinking that SQL-server /MSDE/ORACLE can replace all the characteristics and advantages of a the VFP engine, dream on. First of all the VFP engine is free, freely distributable and very lightweight. Further it has no DB limit and scales up to sevaral hundreds of users. Also, some of the xBase record oriented commands have no equivalent in set oriented DBMS like MSDE. If you're fond of optimizing applications by using good old SEEK(), KEYMATCH(), SET FILTER, SET ORDER TO, SET RELATION, SET KEY TO etc, you'd better think twice before throwing away the VFP dataengine.
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The reliability that SQL Server/Oracle brings to the table, as well as the enhanced level of security far outweighs the cost difference to many, many companies. I don't know what the economic climate is in the Netherlands right now, but I can assure you that even with the economic downturn in the US you don't here of stories of companies junking any of the big DBMSs to go with VFP. You might here of people switching from Oracle to DB2 or to SQL Server, but I've never heard of anyone switching to VFP.

As far of record oriented commands, have you ever written anything in TSQL or PL/SQL or know what they are?????



>Johns, mistake is that he thinks that VFP has no characteristics that have an advantage over VFP. He clearly underestimates the power of VFP in the data arena. Futher he ignores the tremendous investments in code (e.g. frameworks) people have in VFP. Well go out and throw it all away ! Unless, maybe like john, you don't have invested much into code and frameworks.
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Sorry, but I've yet to be in a meeting where someone says "VFP has sooooo much power. How can we talk about switching?" I have been in several meeting, especially lately, where the discussion is about what the next jump should be to get past some of VFPs limitations.


>Of course there is still a lot to do in VS.NET to become what Microsoft says it becomes. Also we've to wait and see what the competition has to offer. Maybe well be developing Delphi (kylix) on linux in about 5 years. VS.NET is not out yet and the early adopters of VS.NET will likely have more problems working with the product than those who can sit and wait and make that decision when a bit more is proven.
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>John can yell and shout, but as long as there are no compelling, interesting products and competative (in your branche) products written with VS.NET, nothing is proven. I like to remember you of OS/2 which was technically superiour over Windows 95, well we know the story about that.
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>Walter,