Ivan,

>>I intend to go with CodeMine. Start with it, learn it, and once I get to know all its features, decide if I should try something else. Hope this doesn't happen.<<

I think I was in a similar situation to yours a few months ago. I doubt I will ever learn all of CodeMine 7 features because it is so rich.

>>The thing is, I know almost nothing about these commercial frameworks.<<

Neither did I. I purchased CodeMine 7 first, mainly because I had used other SoftClassics products since about 1994 and figured they would be around in the future, and also their other product worked so well. And, I haven't been dissapointed with CodeMine 7. The more I use CodeMine the more I see that it pretty much lets me do anything anyway I wish. Also, I found myself productive with CodeMine 7 very quickly. And, their tech support has been very good. Last night at 7:55pm I emailed them a question right before I turned my computer off and Dave at CodeMine had already answered the question when I checked my email this morning at 7:00am. They are not always this fast, but are much of the time. Also, I was able to call and speak to Dave and he clarified many things I had questions about in about 15 minutes. Also, they didn't mind "supporting" someone like me who had an extensive background in Fox products, but not much experience in VFP 7 (they have not called me "dumb" once <g>).

I also purchased MM but did return it for a refund. The reason I returned it had really nothing to do with MM, but more with me. Kevin was very helpful and gladly gave me a refund. I had only been using VFP 7 for about a year - so with learning VFP and MM, it was just to much for me. I have a major product which I must ship this year, and there was no way I could learn MM this year to deliver that product. I started on this project about a month ago with CodeMine 7 and I am way ahead of schedule.

Also, I tested and purchased the ProMatrix enterprise edition for some selected future products to be used by another developer - although CodeMine will be my main framework. ProMatrix kind of takes over the VFP interface and is not only a framework but also somewhat of an application generator. It uses an active data dictionary - and you do most of your initial work building the dictionary. Then, when you generate the program you have a fairly impressive application which you can continue to customize, etc. It will most likely be used for projects that need to be done quickly and where the ProMatrix default interface is not an issue (since it is somewhat of an application generator, the end user application looks somewhat like what the ProMatrix developers intended it to look like. Not to say this is bad, its just the way ProMatrix is designed - at least as far as I can tell at this point).

By way of the framwork manuals, I found the following (I read all manuals twice - guess I am a slow learner - but a fast reader <g>, and worked through the sample applications twice for each framework):

ProMatrix manuals were far and away the best of the three I looked at in my opinion, and the most extensive.

The MM manuals were also good, and were a great study in OOP.

The CodeMine manual is also good, but as of today it is written for CodeMine v.6.x - although Dave is working on the v.7 one which I understand should be released at anytime. However, the CodeMine 7 OnLine help is current, so the manaual is not a problem.

Hope this helps. All this is just an opinion - and what works for me might not work for someone else.

And one final parting shot for CodeMine 7: It just all "fits" together nicely. This might be because it was written by one or two guys, but using CodeMine is consistent throughout the product.

Mel Cummings