>Hi Peter,
>
>>>MUMPS was (is ?) a technical product which I personally compare with VFP.<<
>
>M is still alive, although now called Caché (More preceisely, Caché is supposed to replace M). We have one developer in our local user group who changed employers and now works with M in his new job. From what he said, MUMPS actually outperforms VFP in several areas. And, of course, you can really write cryptic source code. :)
>
>Christof

Don't tempt me !

^MyItemTable("CompanyX","Item1234","ShippingData","TremcardNo") = "1217"

would assing this value to the TremcardNo attribute within the "node" preceeding it. GetNext (etc.) at all node-levels exist, and the connected entities like the implied ShippingData here with the Item1234 can so easily be obtained, "we" can't imagine.

And what about

MyItemTable("CompanyX","Item1234","ShippingData","TremcardNo") = "1217"

Don't see the difference ? well there is : here the ^ is missing, saying that it's just an array. Like Globals (the tables) arrays can have as many dimensions as you like, and all of the manipulation is 100 % the same as with the tables. Nothing can beat that.

But at the time, starting this company, I switched to FoxBase+.
I wouldn't allow my upcoming employees to code stuff like

F I=1:100:1 D MyFunc(Params) I Params < 100 F J:Params:-1 D MyOtherFunc E WhateverOtherCommands

(similar).

The pitty is, that all was there to code normally (i.e. at separate lines) but because these structures are allowed, everybody used to do it like this.

Lateron SQL DBMS was connected to it, and knowing that all could be done to the bit level, there really wasn't anything that could not be done.
It was the fastest for its data-access, which also showed the so beautiful hierarchy in all.

Again, similarities with our VFP thoughts all over the place, with one exception : I don't recall a 2 GB limit to exist ;)