>
Your "observable facts" appear to ignore the positive observable facts, eg Re: The biggest VFP-systems Thread #862196 Message #863612.
>

I participated in that thread. I don't doubt that there are blips of positive sales of the product. There must be and overall, thte product must be profitable. Otherwise, the product would be moth-balled. That said, I don't see what is enumerated in the message you cite as something that is "reversing the trend."


>You did. And obviously there is a third direction which is a flat market.

Assuming there is, flat markets signal no growth - and MS does not invest in those markets.


>
According to Jim Eddins this "dog" of a market is selling more copies of VFP7 than what the arguably biggest reseller of VFP can lay their hands on. And selling these copies across the board from small outfits to corporate users and government departments.
>

I understand that is what he said. And, I can't argue with him since I don't have any hard #'s. Then again, he did not present hard #'s either. And, there is nothing that would lead one to think in the long term, that would last. I have no doubts that there are blips of higher than normal sales. With respect to VFP 7, it is fairly common knowledge that many waited to upgrade. VFP 7 has been out for 2 years. Clearly, many people have waited to upgrade.

Understand Jos that these are existing customers - not new customers. It by no means represents market expansion.


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>>>> FWIW, Fox is not a substitute for SQL Server. They are completely different animals.
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>But who said it was?

The implication was made when Del commented that Otey neglected to mention Fox as an alternative in his column.

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>>>>You do realize that if a file-server based data mechanism is required, MS will advocate Access before Fox...
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>Well not according to the Microsoft VFP home website (although perhaps its all a conspiracy):
>


Obviously, the VFP website will talk about VFP.


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A. Microsoft Access, the database in Office, is the most broadly used and easiest-to-learn database tool that Microsoft offers. If you are new to databases, if you are building applications that take advantage of Microsoft Office, or if you want an interactive product with plenty of convenience, then choose Microsoft Access. Visual FoxPro is a powerful rapid application development (RAD) tool for creating relational database applications. If you are a database developer who builds applications for a living and you want ultimate speed and power, then choose Visual FoxPro. Yippie-Kay-Ay baby!!
>

All this assumes that a lot of non-Fox users frequent the VFP website...Those words are there for your benefit. The only people that really frequent the VFP site are those that use the product. Certainly, they are the only people that would cite it as some authoritative source.

The bottom line, to the rest of the world, MS will recommend some flavor of Sql Server first and then Access.

If MS actively promoted Fox as a solution, you would see a different landscape.


>
>The facts are that Jim Eddins, amongst other vendors, is selling a lot of copies of VFP, worldwide. And MS continue to invest in it, enhance it, and bring out new releases. That, my friend, are the "observable facts" that many of us choose to include in our observations of the current state of VFP. The glass is half full.
>

Tell that to the increasing number of people looking for Fox work...


>
And on whether .Net is at an early adopter stage or not - please comment on these posts. It would be most informative. Specifically any comment on the apparently poor performance of winforms and the compatiblity issues for current VS.Net winforms and the next VS release (which would be suggestive of an early stage of development for any product, imho):
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>Mario Montoya: Message #861017
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>Rick Strahl: Message #856716
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>Cetin Basoz: Message #861341

All Mario concludes is that WinForms run "very very bad" - without much in the way of support. Applying his logic, he must not think much of Fox forms either. Rick concludes that Fox will almost always beat .NET in terms of local performance. All I can tell you is that in terms of a simple test that applied Steve Blacks text example at a Fox devcon a few years ago - .NET actually out performed Fox. The gist of Cetin's comments focus on .Net being "bad at data." My response to that is nonsense. The exact same data-class methodology that Rod and I perfected in Fox and VB - equally applies to .NET. ADO .NET Datasets in fact - area huge improvement over stand-alone ADO Recordsets. In fact, ADO .NET is a better client-side engine than ADO.

It is not that .NET is "bad at data" - its that some have not figured out how to harness its power and to work with data correctly.

All I have is my opinion, which is influenced by my actual experiences with the product. How much have you worked with .NET? I see you citing other people's posts here as an appeal to authority. What is your opinion? And, how informed is your opinion?

As for the compatibility with current winforms with a future VS .NET version - I don't know. My guess is that MS will deal with that issue. Looking at it from a common sense standpoint - it will be all .NET - which could be said in the VS 6 to .NET migration.