Felix,

> Clarion 6 sure seems to have taken a long time though. Do you know

whether the company is stable?

Clarion 6 took approx. 4 years, but SoftVelocity delivered some other tools
during that time, and continued to deliver maintenance releases to the
version 5 product (I think we had 7 releases).

SoftVelocity is privately owned and doesn't release any financial
information. I've given up speculating on their financial health. They've
been producing Clarion for Windows for a good ten plus years and their
employees stick around and seem to be happy. For the past 15 years, reports
of the company's imminent demise have circulated. Mind you, these reports
came from individuals who were not in any position to be in the know. And
despite these reports, Clarion has rocked right along and the company
continues to churn out quality development tools.

> What does Clarion's future look like from your vantage point?

In my opinion, Clarion produces Win32 apps better than any other alternative
development tool, and SoftVelocity has some innovative stuff in the pipeline
(see the clarionmag.com Devcon articles). If they disappear tomorrow, I'll
continue to develop 32-bit guis for some time using Clarion. Clarion is
just another tool in my toolbox.

> How do you connect to Firebird?

ODBC

> The main thing that interstes me about Clarion is its Clarion/ASP plugin.

It seems I could streamline Win32 and web app building with this solution.

I don't use Clarion ASP so I can't give you any insight into their ASP
capabilities.

> How would you compare Clarion with WinDev? WinDev looks much "slicker,"

but I'm concerned that the English version always seems to lag the French
version in stability.

I haven't looked at WinDev in 4 years (last time I upgraded Clarion). I'm
not a good person to compare and contrast Clarion and WinDev because I don't
have the requisite real world WinDev experience. I gave WinDev a cursory
review, and out of the box, WinDev was "slicker" but Clarion built much
better business applications from a full SDLC point of view. I'd suggest
you ask that question over at the SV newsgroup - there are some developers
using both tools that can give you a valid comparison.

HTH,
David