Hi Ron,

>the applications are huge....it took several man-years to create them (I >was not involved in the initial creation).
I DO know the feeling... I took over a part of a large application which was about
5.5MB of code
2.0MB of screens
0.5MB of reports
1.5MB of datadriving logic

as well as about another 10 MB of homegrown (stable but horrible) framework code.

These were the leftovers of a total rewrite in vfp - one of two subapps that was canceled (just a few man years down the drain...)

So now I am going into Beta doing a direct port next month and will be porting over in small, discrete steps totaling at a fraction of the cost of the previous attempt. It will probably take a bit of time, but this way there is less risk involved.

>I will take your advice on creating a routine outside fpw26 to read the >initial xml-file. As long as the xml is processed into a format that fwp26 >can understand (dbf, xls, sdf) I will be able to find work-arounds....
Glad to have helped... type fox2x is all you probably need.

>You´re absolutely correct about the waste of resources...but i´m just the >hired gun. I create VFP apps and com-objects for other customers but this >customer has this huge fpw26 app.
See above. As long as I keep hitting, I am welcome where I work.

>They are in the process of re-designing it and to build it with java but >progress is slow and they need someone to keep these programs up and >running because it is unlikely they will disappear in the next two to three >(!) years.
If the legacy app is well written, you can save tremendous amounts of coding and especially testing time by a port. The larger the app is, the better the ratio of expenditure: each app has it's own gotcha's, but they form usually a flat cost structure: fix it once and it's done for the app. It will be a smaller percentage when the app is large. I do have slew of programs from my port. The port itself is nearly totally automatic, and therefore independent of the size of the code base.

The expiriences with java in the last year (about twice as expensive at start in the cost estimate, and usually overdrawing the budget by more than 50% compared to overdrawing the budget between 10 and 15%) put vfp-development from "to be phased out" to "to continue for the next few years". budget politics... Perhaps another angle you can argue with.

If you are interested for further information contact me by private email.

Regards,

thomas