Antiquated Software

[Stanley Barnett]

I really did not start this to be starting something, as you will see very
little posts from me over the years.  But when people start telling others
things that I know is Not True, then the audience needs informed.  I even
went on to say that I would help anyone with the knowledge and experience
that I have acquired transitioning from filepro to VFP.

Check this out... I just noticed this...  I use Outlook 2003 as my email
client, and while typing these replies, the automatic spell checker is
highlighting the word filepro as misspelled, but not VFP.  And yes I know
why, Microsoft has never heard of filepro... (grin... just kidding, or am I?
try it for yourself).

However, filepro still has a place for all those people that has major time,
money and energy invested in it.  John from Nexus for example, has a major
company that almost uses it exclusively, and for him to start over would be
enormous and expensive, not to mention the learning curve.  There are many
out there that has managed to patch filepro with addons and etc to get their
jobs done.  Most of the solutions are not pretty by today's standards, and I
will bet that as good a filepro programmer as John and Ken is, I would bet
that if we were to compete against each other for a application project for
a customer, I know I could easily win the bid, because of features, modern
looking interface and lots of eye candy, and believe me, eye candy sells.
Many will attack this by saying "theirs will do more" and that may be the
case and probably is, but it doesn't matter because I'll have the bid
because I'll have the bid...  I know that either Ken, Laura, or John is far
better at filepro than I will ever be, as they all have taught me a lot, and
thanks if you're reading this...

Has anyone noticed that none of my questions concerning filepro's future
and/or features has be answered, but redirected, which goes to prove our
case, of secrecy.  You will never find me guilty of holding back the feature
set from my customers, because I want their mouths watering with eagerness!

Tony's comments concerning why you think ODBC drivers have never been
included with filepro.  You make a good argument for this and has caused me
some serious thinking time over this.  I at least have concluded that you
are probably right, but at this point it really doesn't matter, but it
could.  As I see it, filepro is divided into 2 camps, one that has an empire
built on it and those like us that has added new and modern tools to our
toolkits.  For the ones that has empires built on it, the cost of quitting
filepro is still to great, while others like myself would still buy into it
if they can get some of these must-have features in it, as it would
discourage me from biting the big bullet of switching overnight, as I too
have my own accounting system running on filepro, and these new must-have
features can buy us all time...  I have already started the development, and
this time, I have a lot of options available and choices to make...  So why
not include ODBC and SQL as they are beginning to be standards anyway,
especially if you look at MSDE, or MySQL, which are all top-notch and
free...  

Also noticed that MySQL fails the spell checker...

FYI, if anyone is doing Visual Basic, you are missing out on an enormous
amount of database related functions and commands compared to VFP.  VFP is
everything that VB is, but with an added internal database engine that is
farrrrr faster than MySql, filepro, or MSsql.  You do not have to use the
internal engine, instead, you can easily use any ODBC connection to anything
that supports ODBC.  You are in the drivers seat.  VFP also provides native
support for ansi SQL, full referential integrity with triggers and events,
you can create a table from scratch, modify it, "add or modify fields and/or
indexes" all via commands, or a command button, so all this can be done via
script...  Not only that, with a little conversion, any VB script can be
changed into native VFP...  I do that frequently.

I'm going to mention something here that no one has mentioned before
concerning fast data entry.  How many of you use a spreadsheet?  In VFP, you
can do it the same way, enter data using a grid style of a form/screen, all
with click header for sorting, full validation, rules, text conversions and
etc...  Once again, if this is of interest to anyone reply here or email me
offline.

I still need answers and really would like to see the must-have list, as all
of users see it.

Stanley Barnett