A long time ago, I developed a data entry system with VFP-5-DOS. The indexes were so fragile that I had to reindex everything each time the user started the system and I added a global reindex facility for use when the indexes became corrupted during data entry.

For most of the last decade, I've been using VFP as a data engine for data warehouse apps. Data uploads were so large that I routinely dropped the indexes, added new data and reindexed the tables. Therefore, index corruption was not an issue.

I'm looking at a client that wants to develop a new n-tier app using VFP as the business tier and the data tier. The initial interface tier will be VFP, but the client wants to be able to add a web interface at a later date.

I'm concerned about the fragility of VFP-9 indexes and am considering advising the client to move to a SQL Server data engine. For the size of the database, the app would be better served with the VFP engine, but my (ancient) experience makes me leary of VFP's indexes.

Regards,
Thom C.