GoldMine 7.0 has entered it’s BETA stage. I’m bound by an NDA to not discusss any specifics beyond what has already been made public knowledge. That being said, I would like to comment on some of the information that’s been made public thus far:

GoldMine Standard Edition users with more than 10 licenses will either need to upgrade to the Corporate Edition or stay with 6.7 and never be able to upgrade again.

Wow. This is a bold move that was likely driven more by the executive branch than any other. While this could drive revenue for FrontRange, I can say that none of my dBase customers took advantage of a deal FrontRange offered on the upgrade pricing. I’m not sure if that’s representative of the whole GoldMine customer base, but it sure makes me pause to wonder what those users will end up doing when GoldMine 6.7 eventually becomes unusable for those customers.

The BDE will be eliminated and Firebird SQL will replace dBase.
I’d say hip-hip-hooray if I hadn’t lived through the pain of GoldMine 4.00.811. That was the first release that supported MSSQL, Interbase, Oracle, Sybase, Informix &amp DB2. It was followed quickly by 4.00.822 and a parade of subsequent releases which eventually dropped support for all but MSSQL (even though there was quite a lot riding on Oracle 8 support)
Hopefully, the BETA testing is active and thorough and we don’t end up with an insurmountable pile of data-related problems to deal with for the next five or six public builds of GoldMine 7.0. Overall, I give this decision a thumbs up, but I fear there may be some growing pains with the initial release(s) of 7.x. I hope I’m proven wrong.