>I have a very large client who I have written many applications for over the last 15 years. These applications are all FoxPro accessing FoxPro tables. Due to relatively new company policies, this client is being forced to move all data to a more secure environment, namely Oracle (I believe I will have 2 to 3 years to finish this task). I hate to ask what most of you may think is a stupid question... but can FoxPro access and use this data? Is it just an ODBC issue? And if so, does it happen in such a way that will meet their security requirements (I know you don't know what their requirements are, but in general does it keep the data secure)?
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>I apologize for my ignorance, but I have never needed to do anything other than "USE" to get to my data :) I feel like I am going to be learning a lot of new things in the very near future, so if you can point me in the right direction it will be greatly appreciated.


Visual FoxPro can indeed use remote databases. It works extremely well with them.

Obviously you will have to do major changes to the way you access data. There are three basic ways to access remote data in VFP (more depending on how you look at it). To simplify consider:

- Remote Views
- SQL PassThrough (SPT)
- CursorAdapter

Read the help file on these three. I would recommend CursorAdapter that gives you the flexibility to use either OleDB (ADO) or ODBC. I mostly use SPT myself due to some legacy routines. I try to stay away from views as they are less flexible.

You have to decide what type of architecture you want to go with. Either 2-Tier (Client/Server) or 3-Tier with a middle-tier handling the data access.

As per data being more secure, indeed it is with Oracle or other server database, Make sure what you, your client, and the new rules consider "secure" is in synch to avoid nasty surprises.

There's plenty of material to read on these issues, both here, the Fox Wiki and in books such as those from Hentzenwerke.