>We are converting a FPD 2.6 app to VFP 7.0. We would like the ability to dial into a customer running our VFP app (via PCAnywhere) and have the option of debugging our application. I know we can do this if all of our customers have a full copy of VFP, but is there any way we can do this without requiring them to purchase a full VFP package ? Thanks in advance.

Hi, William.

Trying to debug an application when it is in production can be a bit messy. Debugging (meaning tracing a program, inspecting variable and object status and such) is a task that should be done at development time.

However, we actually do a lot of support and diagnosis trough PC Anywhere, Terminal Services or Citrix. What we do is basically have a tight error handling routine. Each of our business objects has its own error object that propagates up the hierarchy, and the is the global error handler. All this information is shown to the user (who is able to drill around the error under some support staffer instructions), AND -maybe this is the most important point- ALL the error detail is logged to an ASCII file that we can look at, transfer, etc.

Beside that, we use lots of assertions in our code, but not trough the native ASSERT command, but trough our own function that shows different options to the developer at desing time (cancel, suspend, ignore, debug), BUT log the assert message (along with stack info, date, time, station, user, etc) on a separated ASCII log. We have two different logs (for each app) so we know what is error logging and what is mere assertion (although many times catching a failed assertion is far more valuable than catching an error).

Hope this helps. Let me know if you want more details, or if you wanted a totally different kind of answer. :)