>I'm not sure yet what exactly I'll be needed...I'm just trying to get some groundwork going for a new project. The potential client has a prototype running in Excel. Automation to Excel is a possibility, but I want to see if there's a package that can do it directly from VFP. The project will be doing financial analysis.
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>>Stats app capabilities run from Excel to SAS. Could you be more specific about your requirements?
Unless it is mostly datamining [which you could do via SQL-Server Analysis Service] go for a large stat package connecting via OLEDB or dB3-compatibility. The Stats apps usually have their own scripting language better suited to the task. Vfp might be helpful for configuration / minimally specialised tasks.

my 0.02 EUR

thomas