Hiya Lazaro .

One thing you might want to look at -
the rework time [and associated cost] of porting your business logic [that you already have in vfp] over to the web. This time and effort will vary depending on the toolsets you choose.

Another thing to look at closely - how will your app be hosted ? Will you want to host it on your own server in your own space, or rent time /space for a particular dedicated server in a web hosting farm, or rent time / space on a 'slice' of a server??

One good combination that I prefer is to use Active FoxPro Pages on an IIS server running on W2K server. I prefer it because I can use non-visual VFP classlibraries and reference them directly in asp-like coding techniques and straight vfp code.

The majority of online systems slinging data are utilizing mysql, php and apache. There is a current push to use firebird sql for backends as it has some other things for c/s that are more meaningful. postGreSql is out there as well.

There are other camps that will talk of IIS and SQL server and ASP. That was a good model for some time, and of course MS is pushing its Dot Net Initiative to everywhere ...

If you choose the apache/mysql/php route - know that it can be coded the same for both Windows and *nix Servers - so you might realize some portability there. The Windows version can use vfp tables via php|odbc hooks. and FWIW - you can hit mysql databases on internet hosted servers via VFP utilizing an regular odbc connection via tcp/ip [should you want to use vfp for reporting and data munging on your mysql server]

Another thing to consider might be the IBM route of domino and websphere - but is useful for db/2 data slinging. You'll have to make your own evaluation there for the need as well as the cost of converting your existing app logic to a completely different platform having nothing to do with VFP.

There are big camps out there for choosing/using which toolset, and many are quite religious about it. Nick Causton of Associated Data in da UK did some benchmarking previously on vfp related toolsets for web apps - you might want to take a look at his web site and see if that is useful to you .


So in summary ? How much VFP do you want to keep from your existing app, and how much VFP utilization do you want for the new web app ? Take a look at that, and evaluate the costs associated with each particular combination of toolsets and servers, keeping in mind time to market, developer retooling costs, developer retraining costs, and any monthly recurring charges based on the server OS/web server fees. I've skipped a bunch of other stuff here for brevity [groan], but I'm sure others give you their own technical experiences with the tool sets you've mentioned ...

mondo regards [Bill]