Rick,

>>XBase doesn't fit well with strongly typed languages which may be the main reason why the model has gone away.

There is nothing about XBase that is contrary to strong typing. Heck, storing a "strongly typed" variable as a hidden cursor field would make it easy to implement and enforce in VFP.

>>However, even in that light I know that a very large number of current developers have worked with XBase at some point in time - you hear very few lamenting that they wish they had it back...

Well, developers are motivated by lots of ideas other than business sense. I thought I was running a cool company-converted-to-Java in 1997 but soon realized I was running a programmer hobby center. Programmer heaven- lots of cool new stuff every day, everybody in "learning" rather than "delivery" mode, lots of opportunity to position oneself as a leading-edge guru and/or write really clever code... ;-)

>>I would root for more XBase like features in other languages, but frankly I don't buy the talk of limitations or ease of use advantages of an XBase language... we've had this discussion before. <g>

I'm not too fussed about the XBase language. What I do care about is persistent indexed local cursors that are underrated as a means of working with complex data IMHO. I guess it doesn't matter so much for standard data access stuff (which IMHO is a commodity) but it makes a massive difference when you are really hammering data.