Hi,

We use inhouse developed application for our capital market data requirement.

Our setup:

* Development: Visual Foxpro 6 with Service Pack 5
* Network Operating System: Novell Netware 4.11 (30 User license)
* Workstation: 1.1 Ghz Celeron
* Workstation O/S: Windows 98 SE
* Hard Disk: 40 GB with 30 GB free space

Our Application: We have designed a application which has been used on the above enviroment for last 3 years without any problems.

Before implementing the above setup, we had tried using application on windows Peer-to-peer 98SE networking and on Windows NT for trial purpose but were not able to add more than 20 machines. The moment more user start using the application, the application generates random errors of 'file not found etc.' We also found that windows has a limitation of SMB of 2048 files open concurrency for a share folder.

Each user starts two instance of the same application on his workstation.
We have modules which have 30 tables with another 30 idx (index) files open at a time.


Our issue: We now planning to increase our user base from 25 to 50 users.
Since novell netware 4.11 is a non supported and unavailable product, what would be the right choice to go a head.

1. Should we upgrade to the latest version of Novell netware.
2. Should we migrate to Windows NT (Latest version)
3. What's Terminal server and Citrix server. Reason of this question is that we have found that citrix with novell netware supports more users.
4. Should we continue with VFP database. (We use free tables)
5. What are other alternates to VFP. We are more interested in data churing out faster and free distribution of developed application. i.e. we don't want our customers to spend additional bucks for database.

In fact we have now come to a turning point where we want to know both from as a developer and the customer end product what is the best o/s, front end, backend that we will need to invest in. The learning curve as a VFP programmers. The cost involved etc.

Thanking you in advance
with regards
(Upendra Nayak)