Hi jess,

>>I don't believe that. For a awfull lot of tasks there is no convinient alternative than using VFP. Take alone the fact how VFP handles data in cursors and the rich and fast DML. Maybe .NET will offer something sumilar effective in the future, but until then there is no alternative.
>We sometimes speak biased because we don't know other tools than VFP. You will be ofcourse singing in a different tune if you know how to develop real world application using purely DELPHI. The VFP data engine while fast enough is not reliable.
>
>>I don't agree with the deadman walking. VFP 8 is beeing developed and will probably released somewhere next year. That will be good enough to justify at least 3 more years of VFP development. After that, we will have to wait and see.
>Uncertainty of VFPs future scares a lot of developers and sometimes customers are who quite informed with software development stuff. How many deals we won't be able to close because certainty issues? Many...
>
>>If you're really open minded, you won't regard VFP to be a deadman walking.
>I could be wrong ofcourse but the trend shows otherwise.

If I try to be open minded, I see that each day more tools get onto the market. Nowerdays more and more specialized software gets developped. Many of us see VFP as a general purpose tool, but it isn't. VFP is about data and munging data. It's natural that VFP loses some market share because VFP is simply not always the right tool for the job. Before MS access was released a lot of 'developers' used VFP to make simple entryforms and reports. MS access is a way better tool to do this than VFP, because of the ease of use. VFP was also used for large enterprises for information systems. Today there are good ERP and CRM solutions and they're getting cheaper each day. So yes, VFP is loosing marketshare, no doubt. I think people are wrong when saying that VFP lost its marketshare to VB or VB.NET. This is only a small part if you'd ask me.

OTOH, seeing this as a proof of the "VFP deadman walking" is way beyond me. VFP, will always be the most suited tools for a lot of applications when doing a lot of data munging. IOW, VFP has the right to exists, because for the most applications I work on, it is simply the right tool.

Walter,