July 19, 2008 04:52pm pdt

1. CarlWarner 218,286
2. CaptainC... 102,883
3. ramrom 49,450
4. tusharka... 21,195
5. zlatev 20,195
6. mikegagnon 11,800
7. wcsoctu 9,000
8. suhashegde 6,960
9. tmedley 5,850
10. hernst42 4,000
11. AndrewJen 3,700
12. dportas 2,900
13. ruscomp 2,100
14. emoreau 2,000
14. afzz 2,000
14. VBRocks 2,000
14. patrikt 2,000
14. boag2000 2,000
14. ebjers 2,000
14. Jerryuk007 2,000
14. cedlinx 2,000
14. CharlesWard 2,000
14. game-master 2,000
14. rojasc 2,000
14. TREKKIEJAZ 2,000
14. puppydog... 2,000
14. BlueDevi... 2,000
14. sbafna74 2,000
14. SergeanT... 2,000
14. mdougan 2,000

1. CarlWarner 1,808,195
2. CaptainC... 887,901
3. ramrom 248,914
4. fcaranda... 174,992
5. suhashegde 131,040
6. cbasoz 121,875
7. mikegagnon 110,995
8. EdRauh 110,294
9. tmedley 85,946
10. Nestorio 72,433
11. samopal 65,948
12. q2eddie 49,131
13. zlatev 42,855
14. slink9 40,320
15. DeepDan 40,069

05.13.2008 at 04:29PM PDT, ID: 23399786

	[x] Attachment Details

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9.4

To Fox or Not To Fox -- Two questions about the future

Zone: FoxPro Database

VFP People,

I need some advice. The discontinuation of Foxpro has been upsetting to all of us. I, like most, am pondering on what the wisest decision is in light of these changes. I've read everything on which I can get my hands regarding the options before us. Unlike many of you, I am relatively new to the scene. I've spent the last three years learning VFP, maintaining an existing DB, and creating a new one that is the backend for a website. I have a great library of VFP books and papers. I was just getting comfortable with Fox, and now, I stand at the crossroads.

Here is my first question: Would I be heading down a dead-end road to write a new, commercial application in VFP?

Our business currently provides doctors with out-sourced billing services. VFP is what we use. Sometimes, a doctor would rather do billing in-house, and that is an opportunity for us to sell them the software. Currently, our database app would need much refinement to get it to commercial quality. I'm looking at rebuilding much of the app anyway, it seems like an opportune time to switch platforms. Frankly, I have no interest in learning .NET. It just seems like another opportunity to get burned by MS. I could go Open Source.

On the other hand, I've been considering developing the new app to be web based. In that case, any major changes that occur with Windows workstation OSes (ie. Post-Vista Windows possibly not running VFP clients) wouldn't affect the application. VFP would run on the server, and the clients would access it via their browser. It seems like a person could go many, many years with VFP if they could separate themselves from the OS in this way.

Second question: If you were in my situation, relatively young, starting out on a programming career, and all you knew was VFP, would you still invest the time and energy in VFP, or would you jump to another ship while you were flexible enough to make that change with minimal damage?

Thank you.

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Question Stats

Zone: Microsoft

Question Asked By: fuze44

Solution Provided By: CaptainCyril

Participating Experts: 4

Solution Grade: A

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05.13.2008 at 10:33PM PDT, ID: 21561487

Rank: Sage

CaptainCyril:

I cannot advise you much but I will tell you what I do. For my desktop applications I feel very comfortable building them in VFP and maybe later switching to .Net if it is up to that standard. I develop all my online applications now in php. It's light, cost free and extremely stable. I write small to medium size applications so a switch is not hard for me in the future.

Accepted Solution

05.13.2008 at 11:50PM PDT, ID: 21561727

tusharkanvinde:

If you want to stick to windows, then the answer is .NET. However, since VFP is much better at handling data, you should be creating VFP dlls for implementing some of the more complex business rules and calling them from .NET. Though Microsoft is committed to VFP until 2015, it has not put sufficient resources to make VFP run well with Vista and things will be even worse with Windows 7. So long as XP rules, VFP is the best, and that is how long you have to upgrade (?) your skills to .NET.

Assisted Solution

05.14.2008 at 12:31AM PDT, ID: 21561846

Rank: Sage

CaptainCyril:

If you have a good size library like I do, you should write it in a very organized way. You can write a program to translate that library to another language. I don't know your work, but try to have business logic built into the library so it becomes easy to translate and to be used on different platforms.

05.14.2008 at 02:21AM PDT, ID: 21562305

mokelly1:

I made the switch from dBase to MySQL and PHP years ago. I am very happy to program all applications using a web base. I set my clients up with an Intranet and then they can work from home or anywhere. You never have to install software just point browsers. It is wonderful when you are not bound to a desktop or a database. Some of my applications use data from an Access Database on a workstation, MySQL on a Linux Server, and Pervasive on a Novell Server.

Open source seems to be the wave of the future. SourceForge.net probably has a web based application project similar to your package. I promote webERP from SourceForge.net. I am having fun providing free software to my clients.

Assisted Solution

05.14.2008 at 02:28AM PDT, ID: 21562341

Rank: Sage

CaptainCyril:

For my kind of applications I convert data extensively and analyze them and produce MS Office documents out of them. I don't see any other tool than VFP for my apps. Microsoft told me to wait a few years before switching to .Net because they will build the data commands in .Net in the years to come.

05.14.2008 at 02:29AM PDT, ID: 21562347

Rank: Sage

CaptainCyril:

I also use MySQL for my online apps which are run on php. My desktop apps connect to the online tools in a great manner. Error reporting, logging, verifying, registering, liveupdateing, ... you name it.

05.16.2008 at 06:10PM PDT, ID: 21587573

fuze44:

CaptainCyril, why did you choose to go with MySQL for your web apps instead of VFP?

tusharkanvinde, since you mentioned Vista not playing well, what are your thoughts on Sedna?

mokelly1 and CaptainCyril, you both seem very pleased with PHP and MySQL. This surprises me because VFP developers always talk about how they can code circles around other platforms. Have you noticed your work progressing much slower under PHP/MySQL?

Can anyone see any problems with my idea of continuing with VFP but running the apps as web based? That is actually where 90% of my experience is. I use West Wind Web Connection to get VFP on the web, and I really like it. I wonder if there's a flaw in this line of thought that I'm missing: If the app is web based, and I'm happy with the backend, will it matter ten years from now if that backend is still running Server 2003 with VFP 9?

Thanks for your feedback.

05.17.2008 at 01:05AM PDT, ID: 21588357

Rank: Sage

CaptainCyril:

My web apps run on Linux. We chose Linux for a very simple reason. The server has been online since April 2006 without a restart. With Windows Server, we needed to restarted the server at least once a week because it would slow down dramatically if not restarted.

My web apps are services for my desktop apps which are totally in Fox. They are used for licensing, downloading datasets, error reporting, demo requests, liveupdating and things of the sort.

05.17.2008 at 02:55AM PDT, ID: 21588580

mokelly1:

I don't think there is any difference in development time between Dbase and PHP. There is no compiling to do with PHP and you can modify on the fly meaning no one has to exit the software. So when I get to the debugging stage, everything goes much faster. PHP will run on Windows, Novell, Mac, and Linux so it is more portable giving me more potential clients.

Web based applications will increase in popularity while desktop applications will decrease in popularity over the next decade.

However, if you can stay busy with what you know now, there is no reason to change. I was slowly loosing clients and felt I needed to add PHP to my skill set. Overtime, my dBase work faded out and my PHP work has taken over.

A friend of mine and I learned RPG II in 1978. We both made a good living at it until 1990. At that time I swithced to dBase and began to service PC software. He had steady work during the decline of RPG popularity and is still doing it today. I see ads for RPG and I believe that it must be very easy to get those jobs. RPG is difficult to develop in and practically impossible to debug. Maybe I just did not learn it well but I do not miss it or dBase.

05.17.2008 at 02:58AM PDT, ID: 21588587

Rank: Sage

CaptainCyril:

I see more clients requesting Web applications. However there is a demand for desktop apps in my country because of bandwidth problems plus my applications are for analysts who use the software while they are traveling, on board of a plane, in airports, hotels and things of the sort.

05.20.2008 at 09:10AM PDT, ID: 21607606

fuze44:

I greatly appreciate all of your feedback. I'm earnestly looking for a way to continue learning and using VFP. I've read a few comments by people stating VFP could always be used for prototyping. Since it's a true RAD tool, this seems reasonable.

Many VFP people are moving towards Python. They find it friendly and similar. As for you PHP guys, would you comment on why you chose that particular "P?"

05.20.2008 at 12:29PM PDT, ID: 21609501

Rank: Sage

CaptainCyril:

VFP is the best.

I looked at Python. I think it only does one level inheritence only.

Can you believe that .Net does not provide some of the functionalities in FoxPro that were there even in the 80s? Mostly database functions and variable conversions.

05.22.2008 at 04:31AM PDT, ID: 21622766

zlatev:

Python is flexible and powerful language.
If I am to develop something that should not be in VFP and in .NET, I will probably try to implement it in Python.
http://www.devshed.com/c/a/Python/Object-Orientation-in-Python/
@CaptainCyril, read the above article to the end, and please explain what you mean by "one level inheritence only"?

Assisted Solution

05.22.2008 at 04:44AM PDT, ID: 21622836

Rank: Sage

CaptainCyril:

Last time I checked Python was end of last summer and I could not define a class based on another user defined class.

In FoxPro I can do that easily.

I don't know if they have it available in Python now.

DEFINE CLASS MyClass1 AS CommandButton
ENDDEFINE

DEFINE CLASS MyClass2 AS MyClass1
ENDDEFINE

DEFINE CLASS MyClass3 AS MyClass2
ENDDEFINE

This is what we call multi-level inheritance.

05.22.2008 at 06:29AM PDT, ID: 21623590

zlatev:

Its not true. Using the sample code from the article, I have altered it a little for the resulting snippet. As you can see from running it, mulit-level inheritance is possible.

                       
         
           
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             class ParentClass:
 testVariableOne = 'This is a test. I promise.'
 testVariableTwo = 'No, really, it is just a test.'
 def __init__ ( self, testArgument ):
    self.testVariableThree = testArgument
 def testMethod ( self ):
    pass
 
 
 
class ChildClass ( ParentClass ):
 
  pass
 
class GrandChildClass (ChildClass):
 
  pass 
 
parentObject = ParentClass ( 'Hello, how are you?' )
 
print parentObject.testVariableOne # "This is a test. I promise."
 
print parentObject.testVariableTwo # "No, really, it is just a test."
 
print parentObject.testVariableThree # "Hello, how are you?"
 
 
 
childObject = GrandChildClass ( 'I am fine, thank you.' )
 
print childObject.testVariableOne # "This is a test. I promise."
 
print childObject.testVariableTwo # "No, really, it is just a test."
 
print childObject.testVariableThree # "I am fine, thank you."

           
         

Open in New Window

05.23.2008 at 05:29PM PDT, ID: 21636985

fuze44:

Thanks for the feedback, guys. It's interesting to see what others are doing. I will probably continue to be torn for some time. My plan, for now, is to continue learning VFP because I enjoy it. At the same time, I'll be researching other languages/platforms to see which direction I may need to eventually go.

20080236-EE-VQP-29 / EE_QW_2_20070628