Excellent product. Powerful, rapid development, diverse capabilities, very stable. I have to offer a balancing opinion to "samburnell". I have used 4D for 17 years. I have found the developer support to be good, sometimes excellent, and very rarely, like any human endeavor, occasionally falling short. Due to the depth of documentation, and the availability of monthly tech notes and tech tips, like most developers, after an initial learning period, my need to call tech support has very been infrequent. As a part of the developer community for many years, and even having worked for the company for periods, I have not seen people ostracized, and only seen people dropped from the company hosted, independently moderated, user group list when the list was used repeatedly, after many warnings, for posts that did not conform to the stated technical purpose of the list. Upgrade costs have been reasonable (such costs have to be viewed in relation to competing technologies with similar capabilities), with many updates available at no cost. The company has been in business since 1984, and survived many ups and downs in the computer industry, partly because it has been privately held. Company information is available (up to a point), and future business and product development plans are presented at a developer conference that takes place almost every year. Over the 17 years of using 4D, I have been a very satisfied customer, and more importantly the users of custom applications I create for Windows and the Mac using 4D have been very happy with the results and the rapid development, relatively low development costs, extremely minimal maintenance costs, and reasonably priced software upgrades. This is what I have experienced.

Excellent product. Rapid development of sophisticated apps that fit tightly in custom environments. I have used this product for years and it is capable of answering large number of needs.

Good product, lousy company, questionable future. Small, privately held, will not divulge company, directional, or growth information. Poor (non-partner) developer support and, if you criticize them, you will be ostracized, and surreptitiously dropped from their company owned network user group, and all your negative posts will be deleted - very nasty. End users beware of high and frequent upgrade costs and dropped support if not pay the price to upgrade frequently. Be advised to check out much better database alternatives from more stable and forthright companies that care about the developers who sell, and the end users who use, their products.