Trusting VFPA 2

[Carlos Yohn - AGP]

thread184-1821033

Continuing with the previous conversation: we have been using VFPA 10.0 32 bits for a couple of years. Now we would like to start with the 32-bit one to see if the speed improves.
In general, it works correctly, but there are times when you encounter problems that make you doubt whether they are bugs inherited from VFP9 or our errors or new bugs.
I've talked to Chen a couple of times about the need to know how many users are using this system and to have a forum for sharing problems, ideas, etc. He doesn't seem to like the idea; I don't know the reason; but this makes me doubt the wisdom of continuing with almost no support.

 

[GriffMG]

Do you mean you want try the 64 bit version?

Regards

Griff
Keep [Smile]ing

There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.

I'm trying to cut down on the use of shrieks (exclamation marks), I'm told they are !good for you.

There is no place like G28 X0 Y0 Z0
​

 

[Mike Lewis]

Welcome to the forum.

You've already found our earlier thread on the subject. I think this airs the pros and cons very thoroughly. The fact that you have already been using the product yourself for a couple of years means that you probably know more about it than most of us here.

For what it's worth, I'll repeat the reasons for my own lack of enthusiasm:

- Lack of information on the website

- Lack of contact details for the author

- Possible difficulties involved in using a non-standard platform

- Doubts about its legality,

This is just my personal viewpoint. Others will disagree. (And the second point clearly doesn't apply to you, since you have already been in contact with Chen.)

As for your main question - re "the wisdom of continuing with almost no support" - you have to balance that against what you see as the benefits of VFPA. (You don't mention what the benefits to you are.)

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[GriffMG]

I've been using the 64bit version for a particular project, in house, for a few months.

It seems, generally, pretty reliable - screen updates are not perfect, buttons disappear
sometimes. Of course a number of add ins don't really work because they were built for
a 32bit base.

It seems quicker.

Regards

Griff
Keep [Smile]ing

There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.

I'm trying to cut down on the use of shrieks (exclamation marks), I'm told they are !good for you.

There is no place like G28 X0 Y0 Z0
​

 

[Chris Miller]

I've talked to Chen a couple of times about the need to know how many users are using this system and to have a forum for sharing problems, ideas, etc. He doesn't seem to like the idea; I don't know the reason;

I won't go into speculations, but it doesn't raise the trust in the product.

On the other hand, anybody could make up a new forum, technically there are enough systems ready to use. It's another thing to run it, moderate it, find participants, etc.

Calvin Hsia, the lead developer of Visual FoxPro for a long run has blogged about it. That's not the norm in all products, not even products of MS. The only other MS official I remember posting very frequently in Foxpro newsgroups was Lee Mitchell. He was signing his posts from "the Microsoft FoxPro Technical Support team" and also always ended his signature in: "This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights."

From that you can read between the lines, what compromise such support is for a company. It's also a reason MS runs the MVP programme, this supports self support and is also a relief for MS. I won't expect a single developer doing anything in that direction.

Chriss

 

[Carlos Yohn - AGP]

Do you mean you want try the 64 bit version?

Yes. My mistake. 64 bits.

You don't mention what the benefits to you are.

The benefits you have'em in VFPA web site: no 2 Gb limit on tables, 64 bits exes, many bugs fixed, memory capacities improvements... no little.

...anybody could make up a new forum...

Yes. Really easy. But i need to know VFPA users; i tried to find them in Foxite. Foxite is the main place i use for sharing VFP code, projects, problems, etc.
No suceess. Maybe there are really few users, or they are not in these forums... I don't know.

It's the main problem for me to continue trusting VFPA. WHen i began with Foxprow - DOS, many many years ago, for me the best thing was the comunity of users helping and teaching each others.

 

[Mike Lewis]

The benefits you have'em in VFPA web site: no 2 Gb limit on tables, 64 bits exes, many bugs fixed, memory capacities improvements.

Re 2GB limit. An easier and more reliable way to solve that problem would be to use a back-end server such as MySQL. It has much better support than VFPA, and there is a large community of users.

Re 64-bit EXEs and memory capacity: I have used VFP for some pretty big project with huge tables, but have rarely come across issues regarding memory capacity. I agree that 64-bit EXEs would be nice, but I don't see that as an overriding factor.

Re bug fixes. You said yourself at the start of this thread about the problems you have encountered, and don't know if they are VFPA or VFP bugs. At least with VFP the bugs are generally well known. I very much doubt that any completely new bugs will come to light. You can't say that for VFPA.

Regarding the lack of a VFPA forum: Yes, that would put me off as welll. It would be nice to have access to an established community of users. Then again, you can always post VFPA-related problems here in the Tek-Tips FoxPro forum. There is at least one user here we know of (Griff) and no doubt others. After all, we answer questions about FoxyPreviewer, XFRX and other third-party products, so why not VFPA.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[Mike Lewis]

I totally disagree that it is easy to set up a forum. This is something I have had to do several times over the years. Every time has been a nightmare. I'd go as far as to say that setting up a forum - or, rather, customising off-the-shelf forum software - has been one of the most difficult technical jobs I have had to undertake.

The initial setup is bad enough. Moderating the live forum is another headache. You'll get all kinds of idiots trying to disrupt it, to dump their spam in it and to generally cause a nuisance. If you are not careful, moderating could become a full-time job.

At least, that has been my experience.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[GriffMG]

I have been there Mike!

The only problem with forums is the users, no doubt about that, we're all bonkers B-)

Regards

Griff
Keep [Smile]ing

There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.

I'm trying to cut down on the use of shrieks (exclamation marks), I'm told they are !good for you.

There is no place like G28 X0 Y0 Z0
​

 

[Chris Miller]

I totally disagree that it is easy to set up a forum

I've made it very clear that there is a difference between the technical aspect and the administration and time invest and also the aspect of making a forum a success and the legal aspects. No need to reduce what I said.

Chriss

 

[Chris Miller]

But i need to know VFPA users;

the best thing was the community of users helping and teaching each others.

Putting one and one together, to get to a forum, you would need to become active yourself. You're already on this path, aren't you? You tried to motivate Chen to do this and failed, you came here to see whether there is an interest.

That Chen doesn't want to offer a forum does not say he won't point out a forum to his users, it's helping him to need to do less support, so I doubt he'd suppress a forum, the opposite will be the case. And if it remains inactive and unsuccessful you have another measurement about how good of a business decision it is to use VFPA.

In that last question once you decided for VFPA, this is VFP9+, isn't it? So there is no reason to row back. The question is whether to build up a secondary mainstay and learn something else. Mike Lewis has pointed out in the aspect of the 2GB limit it's best to go into a server database, this has been a secondary and important mainstay for many VFP developers already long before VFP was split off of the Visual Studio. There always were good reasons for it. Another mainstay could of course be anything internet related. VFP isn't a main player in internet based applications, is it? So even if you are the database guy more than the user interface guy, learning a database servers SQL or NoSQL, too, enables working in aspects of web based applications, too. Developing APIs, not only using them, for example.

Chriss

 

[Mike Gagnon]

Mike Lewis

Do you think the Tek-Tip management would agree to add a VFPA forum like there use to be for Foxpro2.6?



If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ184-2483 first.

 

[GriffMG]

Why not use Contact Us to ask them

Regards

Griff
Keep [Smile]ing

There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.

I'm trying to cut down on the use of shrieks (exclamation marks), I'm told they are !good for you.

There is no place like G28 X0 Y0 Z0
​

 

[Chris Miller]

That's surely an option.

Chriss

 

[Mike Lewis]

Do you think the Tek-Tip management would agree to add a VFPA forum like there use to be for Foxpro2.6?

I think it's unlikely, given the likely size of the user base. But it would cost nothing to float the idea.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[Gerrit Broekhuis]

FWIW Chen posts quite often of foxite.com and he responds to certain questions.

Regards, Gerrit

 

[Carlos Yohn - AGP]

...Re 2GB limit... Re 64-bit EXEs ... Re bug fixes...

You'r right. But you asked for VFPA benefits; and these are without doubt, if they are as Chen says.

About moving to another database engine as Sql Server, of course; we already do. But still are some customers that don't wanna move.

VFPA, this is VFP9+, isn't it?

This is the question to answer; not the conclusion. Could be VFP9+-

Now we are paying a fee for VFPA 10.1, 10.2, 64 bits. It's true that it's a really cheap one.

Anyway i'd love to know problems VFPA users found and solved or not.

 

[Chris Miller]

AGPsoftware

This is the question to answer; not the conclusion.

I did mean it as rhethorical question. It is, and the moment you decided to continue your product development with VFPA you bet on that horse instead of VFPX,. VFPX is the VFP communities effort to continue VFP development without changing the VFP core runtime, i.e. it all works on basis of VFP9.

What's more successful remains to be seen, indeed. So I take back my rethorical question.

Still, the point I then made is if Chen stops VFPA development you still are in the same boat as those using the unchanged VFP9 last version. And so the focus should be on moving anyway, have a new mainstay. You're still among the people who want to become the frog that's in the pot starting to boil, you just think you made an evasive move by going to VFPA.

Look at the way things are just now: For example older C++ runtimes still work and are the basis of getting older ActiveX controls to work on current Windows. So older applications needing those older ActiveX also still work. This is also true for the C++ runtime that VFPX and VFPA need. So people worrying about that are having a pointless worry. If all else fails you'll put an application into a VM, and customers needing that will take that path along with you. Sure, that'll become a worry from then onwards and you might lose customers when that step becomes necessary as that's having bad smell. "Why do I need to move software into a VM?" is what they'll ask themselves. No matter if they even understand what a VM is. But if that software is business critical for them, they'll go along. They'll just also look for alternatives.

------------ Cut.


New thought:

You have a big investment in all your VFP codebase. That's a point you always have with anything, if you developed in VB for years, that'S your investment you want to protect. No matter what you use, if you move single tracked you are bound to fail when a track ends, that's always the case, no matter how certain or uncertain a rod map is and how good it looks when a roadmap still exists for the many years, you only can plan ahead for that time. You're now already at a point you stil ride that train without a roadmap ahead.

It was always a lazy and risky business decision to rely on one horse only. And you're already riding a dead horse just with some old support (FoxPro community) and some new support (Chen). You don't change to something main stream because that's so far off that it means a too steep change to make, it would stall all new development as you can't migrate the codebase and enhance it at the same time. Well, that would be easier, if you already would drive on two or three tracks all along. It becomes more and more difficutl the longer you wait.

At some point the worst scenario will be that your valuable codebase you built up all these yearsw doesn't work at all. Maybe not even because Windows doesn't suppoort it, but because people tend to use Macs. So to protect your investment you'll need to go more and more abstruse ways of emulating old Windows versions AND old hardware.

--------------- Cut, next thought

If it is really your concern that Chen also stops development, you didn't drive on the longer roadmap, really. To me the VFPX project and all the features you get from there, which often also work for VFPA are the roadmap of VFP9 that the community chose to build up and will be able to continue longer, because they are more. Even if single persons contributing to VFPX go off that roadmap, it can continue. You trusted Chen more than the VFP community, because, well, you know best because of what. I have looked at some bugfixes and find them unimportant, as I never came across the bug they fixed. I'd say VFPX has more advances than VFPA. But to me the more than 2GB DBFs are not as valuable as they seem to be to you, for example.

So debatable which choice to make. There are different perspectives on whether VFPA is the better continuation than VFPX and if one aspect of VFPA is more important to you, then you made the right move to that roadmap. Now you're woried that stops one day. How peculiar, a deja vu.

If it is the major importance for you to have a sure future roadmap, you have to go with the mainstream. That is an argument that was against VFP even when VFP was within Visual Studio, as it never was a mainstream development tool and programming language. So you bet on the wrong horse in the first place, not just recently. If the sure future roadmap is your concern you would start with and follow the mainstream and that would have meant VB or C++ and nowadays C# or VB.NET. or JAVA all along, or PHP in the web and nowadays maybe Python or ASP.NET for th4e MS enthusiasts. VFP was never on that mainstream road. And at any stage of going of the mainstream you made the step to go back to it harder to overcome. And it will still become harder, the more time you invest and stick with in VFP.

All these arguments are not new, they also were made when VFP9 development stopped. So at least you could have started something in parallel for 15 years now. So once more said, if future safety is your concern then wake up, open your eyes and start on the mainstream platforms, that's the only valid thing to do.

I predict you won't go that step so you have to live with a fear of getting stuck and running to a dead end sooner or later. That's it about that point, there's really no more4 discussion to be lead about it.

Chriss

PS: I'm a bit drastic here. The choice for FoxPro back in the beginning was based on it's stunning performance back then, but even if you was there and witnessed the speed of data acess from local files, if you're honest you'd know it's just a publicity stunt to show the best case performance, it stops being that, once you get to shared access on a LAN and it was clearly that way from way back then until today. So you always decided for FoxPro on the basis it's a good tool for single user applications, it was never good for general purpose data centric application programming which most of the time means client/server and muti user. And you better have an active process on a server for that, becuase - punvch line - local data access is the fastest, so it also is best to not only have data remotely stored (I use remotely also for LAN shares here, anything but local drive files), but also a remote process to which this is local files. And even when having that, you always have the overhead of bringing that to the actual client, you can't prevent having that disadvantage in shared and centralized data storage, and clearly it's not possible to do that best with a serverless solution.

 

[Carlos Yohn - AGP]

VFPX & VFPA are absolutely different projects, and compatibles.
Anyway, i don't intend to argue. For sure you have a big part of reason.

I've only heard from one VFPA user here; very similar to Foxite. I guess I should deduce that there aren't many. I must also suspect that Chen is alone in this project.
Nothing good


TIA
Regards

 

[Chris Miller]

VFPX & VFPA are absolutely different projects, and compatibles.

Don't know exactly what you mean to say with this. I'm aware VFPX is not a new VFP version whereas VFPA is, indeed also covering the most made wish to stpe up to 64bit.

Scott already saw it's opening a door and closing another one, you don't just get the benefit of being able to zuse 64bit ODBC drivers, but also can't use 32bit ones, for example.

But let's look at what makes out a new version of FoxPro: It's new features and that's what the sum of all the VFPX projects are. And they are by definition all compüatible to VFP9. VFPA is also mostly compatible, but you already mentioned the old thread184-1821033, where one of the most valuable contributors of the VFP community, Rick Strahl, was cited saying he won't test all his tools and libraries to still work in VFPA. The bigger the difference between VFP9 and VFPA becomes, the more likely you can't just combbine anything from VFPX with VFPA.


Chriss