If you current application is based on local views, you will need to convert those to remote views and upsize your data to SQL ( suggest doing this with DTS or SSIS rather than the upsizing "wizard" )

Don't underestimate the learning curve you have ahead of you if your original app was not designed with some thought to or knowledge of the issues involved in converting a VFP app to a VFP/sql Server app.

I have a strong prejudice toward using serious professional frameworks and this is exactly a place where you might want to consider how much of the process would be facilitated by having access to tested libraries for creating connection classes, handling remote views, facilitating n-tier design etc.

You'll want to decide if remote views are right for you or you want to handle things with stored procs and sql pass through. There is some very good stuff discussing these issues both here and on the Wiki. Andy Kramek has done some very interesting stuff with Data Classes and I believe a lot of that is available on foxite. Duffy, Peterson and Paddock did a very backend based framework a while back - don't know what the state of that is right now but takenote.com ( duffy's site ) may have more on it.

At F1 Techonolgies ( f1tech.com ) there is Visual FoxEpress which has extensive SQL server support. ( my personal choice and the framework I teach and use for development ) I believe MereMortals ( Kevin McNeish at Oakleaf ) has good SQL support and I believe some other frameworks do as well. (some better than others, so be sure to look specifically at that part of their feature set )

Tools can help a LOT. If your application is reasonably complex there are a lot of issues involved. Not trying to scare you off, just encouraging you to decide if it is cost/time efficient to not reinvent any wheels and to be prepared to decide if this the time to redesign anything that wasn't originally designed in SQL Server friendly way.

All that being said, performance problems can be addressed a lot of ways besides converting to SQL server (which may not in itself solve the problem ) I'd look at using views, good rushmore, and reducing data traffic on the network by moving only index over the wire while parameterizing data requests. Designing the app in this way will be very useful in any case if you want to upsize.

regarding PDFs, you can do that right now in your VFP app by integrating the excellent XFRX ( in downloads here ) - IMO one of the very best third party tools available in for VFP. Will allow easy output of Foxpro reports to PDF, Excel, Word, HTML and a whole lot more. Much quicker to learn than Crystal and with the new features if VFP 9 the combination will eliminate a lot of need for Crystal - especially in VFP dbf based apps where there are still some serious issues with Crystal.

>I have a multi-user Foxpro application using DBF's that suffers from large performance problems. The main problem is that the tables reside on the network and any file opens to these files take a huge amount of resources. Rather than re-code the entire application to be client-server, I would like to convert it to be SQL Server based. I have figured out how to open a SQL Server connection and have actually been successful in retrieving some records. What I do not know if how extensive it will be to convert all of the Foxpro specific file I/O to SQL Server. I have a few hundred forms, tables, and reports. Is there some sort of web resource that someone can point me to in order to get started? On a side note, does anyone know if there is an easy way to convert Foxpro reports to use Crystal? I would like to take advantage of Crystal Reports - mainly for the PDF option, but other reasons as well.
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>-Randy