Hi Kevin
Thanks again for all your comments and spending so much timee adressing the questions.

Just one additional question

I know that MSDE slows down after a number of concurrent users do you know waht this number is and if the speed degradation is significant ?

Regards,

Gerard



>Gerald,
>
>In your experience of developing and comparing VFP and Dot Net, if you take the 'Fastest ' pssible way of doing things in Dot Net, what is the likely speed comparison for doing normal mundane things like:
>
>1. Displaying a screen , with say no Grid
>2. Displaying a screen with 2 tabs, Details and Grid, with say 30 transactions out of a table of 30,000 being selected into the grid
>3. Running a query (for reporting purposes) which takes say 30 transactions out of a 30,000 record table
>
>
>Example: in the last year, I rewrote a VFP job-costing system for a construction company in .NET. It's a medium-size app with 8 forms (customer, job, timesheets, labor&materials, invoicing, couple of reports).
>
>Not a small app, but certainly not a big complicated one. Most forms have either tabs and/or master/detail grids. The users were satisfied with the performance of the new system, and found no differences. The back-end database is now MSDE.
>
>(And as I mentioned in my earlier post, I don't see much speed difference between binding a grid to a table with 100 rows or 10,000 rows...though the latter number is something that isn't often necessary).
>
>If your queries are optimized (and I prefer stored procedures where possible) and your database set up correctly in terms of keys, your data access should be as good as VFP. Even though you *can* use the VFP OLE-DB Provider for data access with .NET, I would recommend MSDE/SQL-Server.
>
>Going from a VFP app to .NET may mean a total re-think of your data access, depending on how you were doing it - if your apps were binding grids and other controls directly to the back-end VFP data, then you have some re-architecting to do.
>
>Now, in fairness, some have reported that forms with a number of bound controls will display a little slower than VFP. I honestly cannot say I've observed that. My user base has at least 256 MB of memory and some have 512 MB. As I said, I've done several .NET apps, and performance has never been a complaint.
>
>No, I don't think you're being picky, these are important factors. I've dealt with users who were highly sensitive to even small delays.
>
>My advice to you? Take some time, crack open the VS.NET box, create a sample form and retrieve some data from a back-end data source, and see for yourself. You'll never be convinced until you do so. Again, I or others on the .NET forum will be happy to help with any specifics.
>
>Kevin