>Why do you say "in XML"?
>
>In XML is equivalent to "in English". In other words, neither XML nor English is any kind of place where anything is "stored".

Are you just trying to be argumentative here? In .NET, many things are stored in files that contain XML. A typical place to store local meta-data is in the App.config file which is simply an XML file. I did say local meta-data in my post. You are well aware that I know the difference between the Fox notion of local data and the local meta-data, I referred to. I have never had the need to store data locally in any .NET development I have done. However, I have never stored data locally in any of the VFP apps I have done in recent years because they all used SQL server. To a Fox developer, Local data is stored in DBFs and I have deliberately not used DBFs in years. So, the fact that I haven't used local data in .NET should come as no surprise in this case.

>Seems to me that if you store that XML in local data storage then you are only fooling yourself if you believe that "I have never had a single requirement to store data locally when using .NET".

I have been on your side of most of these arguments being a long standing VFP developer but now, I am seeing just how trite and petty you can be. I didn't say I stored XML in local storage. I said the XML was the local storage for META-DATA. The XML is stored in a text file that can be called virtually anything but it contains XML. Is that plain enough for you?

>I might even go so far as to postulate that XML is more a contrivance to perpetuate the constant change that many vendors need to keep themselves in business.

What kind of wordy language are you speaking in Jim? Seems you don't like XML either? In the rest of the world, XML is ubiquitous. It isn't quite so in VFP so it’s suddenly a "contrivance"? XML allows disparate systems to talk to each other - its just text. It can't hurt you Jim, it can't hurt VFP either. Get over yourself.