>Janet Fernando is my colleague in the same company. >1. The trouble thing in VFP Community is lack of supporting books that specifies the importance of using the DATA Environment.

The DATA environment can be utilized either from a FORM.SCX, or by subclassing in code. Every book about VFP that I've read addresses that difference and suggests preferences and reasons. You should add to that the importance of the DBC. It's relationship to views, long fields names (beware of that danger), relationships and referential integrity is of first importance.

>2. On my opinion, learning to use Data Environment is one of the most critical and important thing in the Life of VFP programmer. Not using it is not maximizing the Power of VFP.

You can't avoid using it, in one way or the other. The real problem here, IMHO, is designing a proper database schema. Which involves both the DBC and the DE.
I've seen more failures of an app due to failure to normalize the schema (to at least the 3rd Normal Form), improper choice of Primary Keys (making monsterous keys by concatenating fields into a string, using actual data as PKs instead of a surrogate value), etc....


>3. I have used Power Builder and Designer/Developer 2000 of Oracle Corp. which the latter found out be awkward when it comes to design and presentation. The only thing that troubles me in VFP is lack of security and not a hign performance.

Security is an implementation issue. Nelson King, in his most recent book on VFP5, supplies an excellent model of security down to the field level and supplies a "gatekeeper" function that make implimentation a snap. Combine that with table level triggers that employ the gatekeeper and no one is going to be looking at or changing info without proper access. There is a review of Nelson King's book in the UT Knowledge Base.

>4. Hope that the next version of VFP already addressed such problems. > >Please comment....

What's progress without big fixes and "enhancements"! But, for every bug that's fixed expect to get two more for free. :-)