Walter,

All I can say is if you are delivering solutions and your clients are happy -then you are doing what you need to do. I am not convinced that all the data needs to be acquired in those large chunks - but again I don't know all of the facts. I have been involved in projects with fairly large data-requirements. As for views - you and I have been down that road - and there is no need to go down it again. We will simply have to agree to disagree.

As time goes by, more and more come to realize that Fox does to have the presumptive advantage anymore of speed and flexibility. I do understand the speed and dexterity with which you can develop apps out of the Fox box and not looking further than that. And for your niche - it sounds like it is working well for you. My point is that while there are many Fox success stories out there - it is not enough to carry the day for Fox. The VAST majority of the rest of the world is looking elsewhere. Is much of this due to the MS marketing machine? Sure. But in all fairness, the MS Research Folks have put their $5 Billion annual budget to good use.

I continue to go back to Orlando 1993 - when Roger Heinen announced what was then called the unified tools strategy. Some argue that MS has switched course - and to a degree that is true - insofar as tactics are concerned. For example, COM vs. .NET - that is really a tactical issue when you get down to it. The real strategy has been the unified toolset. And 10 years later - when you look at .NET, Longhorn, Yukon, etc. - that is precisely where we are at. And finally, in the June or July 1993 FPA - John Hawkins wrote his prophetic piece when he did a 1 year post mortem on the MS/Fox Sofware "merger" - really a stock acquisition. Hawkins had several prophetic questions like "Why did MS acquire Fox in light of Cirrus (became Access) and VB - which at the time was at version 3.0. 10 years ago - Hawkins saw the writing on the wall - and pretty much predicted that Fox would never be front and center.

Fox was a great tool and yes - it still is - but the computing world and the state of the art has moved on. And I - as much as anybody - owe a lot to it -as well as some significant people that helped me along the way.

IAC, congrats on your successes and as long as you can continue to ring the register with Fox - have at it...

< JVP >