Jim,

Looks like you have a lot of questions as well as got a few things wrong. Let me see If I can clear some things up for you.

Everywhere I go refers to numerous companies over the last 10 years. The people in question usually are the IT folks. From time to time the folks in the department using the APP say the same becuse they were told so by the IT folks or someone has come along and sold them a bill of goods.

The people in the $100 billion department don't have clue as to what they are doing or what they use. The folks in charge know that they stole some exisiting programs from the compnay they used to work for because they worked. They had someone come in and put them into use. They had some problems when I got there but I cleared them up. FoxPro is all they know so they think it's fine. They don't have the computer savy a third grader has in most cases. They know that if they click the icon and put in a date, the thing runs and gives them a report. On the days this does not happen, they say that Foxpro stinks and is the worse thing they have ever used. I explain daily that the program can't work today but not work tomorrow if nothing has been done to it. We find 99.9999% of the time that it is user error in some way. Wrong date put in or not data file availble to be used by the program. All of which is the resposiblity of the user. Most times the user isn't logged onto the network where the program resides.

SBT is an accounting program written by a company. It was written in old FoxPro for windows. It still works today although the copmany was bought out and now the new company wants to sell us the new accouting program they have written in another language. If it fails to run properly, they hate it that day. If it runs normal, you don't hear a word of prasie or anything else.

Most Oracle and SQL guys talk about the the Fox tables being flat tables and that they take up a lot of space. They talk about them being slow where theirs is fast. Of course I realize they are using Unix servers and I have Windows NT boxes.

I was stating that I have to buy third party Apps to use Oracle and SQL server to give the users what they want.

I am quite sure you have run into the same thing. One guy in the Oracle
group said thet users might as well be using Excel.

I have to say that most people I know that talk about foxpro negatively have never even used FoxPro. I mean they aren't end users nor have they used the application itself. I have never been in a position where i couldn't solve a problem using FoxPro. It usalluy solves problem faster and cheaper than any other program I have used.

I also need to add that now that I am in the SQL Server world, I find them bad mouthing oracle. I guess it all comes down to your preference and what you have been exposed to.

Randall