John,
1) I'm not using stored procedures out of necessity - I'm using them because it's the best fundamental approach. Even those who built applications in VFP still made the provident decision to utilize stored procedures, to take advantage of multi-processors, SQL-92, and building something tool-independent. The FoxPro application that Rod Paddock and John Petersen developed, and their work on the Fox version of DataClas, is based on stored procedures. So it's not just a .NET thing...
Running stored procs can take advantage of ASMP...also, work can be preserved even when the development tools change. I think it's a great solution to deliver to a customer.
I just spent a day and a half designing a stored procedure to bring back 3 results sets for a critical reporting process. I *could* have done some of the queries in the back-end and further 'munged' the data before passing it off to Crystal...which would mean two code bases to produce the final dataset, and it would have been unnecessary. By doing it all in a stored proc, all the processing prior to the phsyical report generation is now client-independent.
If others chose not to use them, fine - but the previous assessment of "rubbish" (granted, not yours) on a technical forum is just one more example of a strong assessment with little or no accounting for it.
2) I have produced 5 Winform apps - desktop, client-server, and web-based. My absolute honest assessment is that I haven't noticed a big difference in performance between Winforms and VFP forms.
About the only thing I can say is that consistenly my .NET apps load a tiny bit faster than the VFP apps they replaced, and that MDI child forms in .NET sometimes take maybe a second or so longer to load...the first time. Subsequent loads in .NET seem as fast as VFP to the naked eye, and sometimes faster. Others may have different perspectives, but I can only tell you what I have seen.
I think the Paint program that Rod referenced is a very good example of a responsive Winforms app.
My clients/users have not reported any differences in speed. I would not be shocked to hear that official benchmarks would show Winforms losing to VFP forms by a small margin - but I have yet to see anything that lead me to observe they were sluggish. So I personally do not see it as a big issue.
I don't disagree with your point on the analogy with VFP3 - and some pretty basic but decent tips back in '95-'96 to get around it (delayed instantiation, etc.) can be used in concept in Winforms. But I concur with Rod's earlier statement. I just have not seen this as a big issue.
(My clients and I all run good hardware - there's no question that .NET apps need to run on good hardware. On 'slower' machines, it wouldn't surprise me to hear reports of sluggishness).
But again, I really feel you missed the earlier point. Just to recap, about a month or so ago, Walter made a claim that the datagrid in .NET is fine for displaying a small amount of data, but would be problematic when loading the grid with thousands of rows. I challenged that statement, and provided an example of loading a grid with thousands of rows, and going further by deriving from the textboxcolumn class and overriding the paint event to develop a functional 'setdynamicforecolor' that seemed as fast as VFP.
(I believe you characterized this as a "carefully selected example", yet provided no guidelines for a 'better' example).
At the time, I also stated to Walter the issue of record selection. You did not jump in and provide a 'lecture' on a design flaw when he raised the question (but you did hint at directing it towards me when I referenced this from a different angle), nor have you said anything about other statements that should have been challenged.
Your statements about this being a fox forum and home turf have lead me to believe (similar to what Rod said) that you don't challenge questionable (or worse) statements when they come from staunch Fox supporters, but strongly challenge others who work more with .NET. The follow-up statement that
"using a grid for a 5,000 row table in VFP is not necessarily a design flaw. It quite possibly (probably?) is in dotNET" is in one way a head-shaker, and in another way insightful.
It just seems debating these topics is a lost cause, no matter how strong the evidence is. I have simply challenged the statements regarding .NET. Again, I offered a good example that was characterized as a "carefully selected example", a powerfully-neutral statement that had no interest in validating a 'pro-.NET' stance, and no evidence to challenge it.
Even though this is a FoxForum, the UT in general is a technical forum, and enough statements have been made regarding .NET that responses were necessary. (And I've spent time on the .NET forum trying to clear up information regarding Fox). You've spent more time making observations about things like "tone", "motive", etc, than anything else. You've accused me of preaching and beating a dead horse on topics that you feel everyone is aware of - when clearly not everyone is, or the recent questions by a few members would never have been asked.
Which leads to my final point on this topic and final words on the FoxForum for what I expect will be a considerable amount of time:
I spoke with JVP right before I sent this. He relayed to me what he's been doing as of late. For example, tonight, he was at a dinner with the following individuals:
Andrew Card, Chief of Staff, White House
Arlen Specter, US Senator
Curt Weldon, US Congressman
His next significant activity is next week...George W. Bush, President of the United States, during his next visit to Southeast PA.
Like JVP, I'm moving on. Discussions like this are just not worth the time and effort.
Kevin
