new features?

[Tyler]

I'll put in my two cents.  Using a web interface with filepro's fpcgi is
probably anyone's best bet who wants a decent UI but still use fp.  I find
PHP works well so long as you are good in your code design habits already.

ODBC for filepro is laughable - you can only do reads from fp data.  Ditto
for the fpSQL module, which supports only a tiny subset of SQL anyway.

Interoperability is pretty much nil; they now have sockets, tho, which is at
least a tiny bit better than only having file dumps to read in and out.

I found it pretty easy to migrate to MySQL from filepro after building a
conversion system in filepro.  The filepro processing logic, providing you
can make sense of it, isn't difficult to migrate for invoicing and inventory
systems (or if you have your data organized right, you can just buy an off
the shelf system - a much better option IMHO, unless you need constant
bizarro customization like my employer does).

Development in PHP is pretty fast, especially with code and class re-use
that is extremely difficult or outright impossible to do in filepro.  MySQL
is a great DB in my opinion, you have tons of choices and customizations you
can make and there are some great add ons to the language like INSERT...ON
DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE.  And you get built in data integrity!  One of the
things I hate most about filepro is the total lack of foreign keys; in
filepro it is far too easy to change data in one place and not have it
change in the other, or prevent you from making an inappropriate change at
all.  And with no triggers either, there is no way to run a chunk of code
every time a field or record is accessed.

While the migration can be dreary (mapping my filepro data to my mysql
schema was booooring), the time and effort saved overall after with lowered
maintenance, lowered coding time and ease of interoperability will pay you
back many times over in my experience.

Tyler
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