John,

>I read this response, but still reject the premise that someone with no knowledge at all can act as advisor/designer/know-it-all. Cogent experience is necessary.

Knowledge <> practical experience and practical experience <> Knowledge.

(and Knowledge <> Understanding, while understanding implies knowledge)

That said, someone can have knowledge of a subject without knowing the exact details, hence the example. In the real world decisions are seldom made on low level details, but rather on high level abstracted models.

The issue here is, what the implications are when not having a powerfull local database engine in the front end or middle tier. Those implications are not difficult to see if you've got the knowledge and understanding of application- and database design. Then all arguments of "you cannot judge if you haven't actually done it" becomes merely a poor defence rather than it is based on actual understanding of the actual problem.

The only disagreement we could have then, is if the high level conclusions are relevant or not. And this might be the core of the whole discussion. There is no straight answer to that I'm afraid. If you do not have a requirement for extensive and complex data manipulation on the client and do not work with large datasets, then indeed the relevance might be marginal, but if you have to find workarrounds (writing large algorithms for thing that can be done in VFP quite easily), this argument directly merges into the RAD argument.

In any case, you've got to watch out with projecting your (not personally) conclusion to others as the issues might well be relevant to others. The fact is that in VFP you can do magical things with local data, tables, storing metadata, including it in your executable etc, that might be a nightmare for several reasons in .NET.

If someone is concerned about these issues then it is wise to stick with VFP and just wait and sit back and see how things are progressing. We all know that .NET is not finnished and still needs to mature. Having that in mind, you better watch out for folks talking you into a technology that will cause you severe headaches and walks the dinasour within a few years (winforms as oposed to avalon, ADO.NET vs its successor).

Walter,