Randall,

Please see my comments (and commiserations) interspersed with yours...
>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.

Yep, most of us have encountered that crap. You have to pick your spots if inclined to "debate" the point and it generally is easier to let them run off at the mouth.

>
>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.

So their 'real' problem isn't FoxPro so much as it is working with a computer and having expectations like 'it should know better'.
The only thing that I can suggest here is to take a little time to either give them some BASIC training on how the application(s) work and what they NEED to function properly OR provide a document with similar information, possibly including some kind of a "checklist" for them to go through to see if they can help themselves. A short story... long ago I was involved in automating our largest railway and we had a "Control Centre" where users across the country called when they encountered a problem. I was in the Centre one day when the guy I was talking with got a call. He listened, then the first thing he said was "Hmmm. Sounds like I'll need to get documentation on this. Please hit the paper-feed button so that our stuff will start on a new page that you can fax to me later". His next words, after a few seconds, were "That's great. Call me back if the problem happens again.". It was his way of 'telling' the caller that the machine was out of paper without sounding trite or condescending.

>
>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.

Again, that's the life of a programmer/support person.

>
>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'd say that yours should still be faster (at least as fast) than theirs, though the hardware could play a big role here. You *might* benefit from some work on index optimization *IF* theirs is much faster. There could also be configuration issues, especially RAM, HD quality and network factors at play.
>
>I was stating that I have to buy third party Apps to use Oracle and SQL server to give the users what they want.

Yes, I had mis-read and someone else was already kind enough to straighten me out.

>
>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.

Yes I have. Perhaps when they mature a little more they will realize that bad-mouthing what they know little/nothing about doesn't help them in the long run.

>
>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.

When I hear particularly nasty negative comments around the ears of 'important' people I sometimes ask what it is that they find so lousy about the language. This usually informs the hearer that the criticism is weak and hearsay and unfounded from experience.

>
>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.

Such is human nature. Slowly, most of us learn that bad mouthing doesn't offer much in the way of progress.

cheers, and don't let them grind you down.
>
>Randall