Tracy, I'm sure we all agree. Perhaps we can also agree that the OP does not need to be told to investigate other tools- that's what his post was about.

FWIW, while I agree that dotNET's data munging is fairly agricultural, I don't particularly agree with his ideas about dotNET and primetime. IMHO dotNET does some stuff really well. We did some C# frontend/data translation work starting in 2002 and thought it was OK... but then we had existing middleware to build it on. IMHO it's got easier over time - many of today's dotNET proponents would be aghast to see what we had to do back then. ;-) LINQ will make it easier again, as will subsequent improvements, until many/most people no longer perceive an advantage in keeping on keeping on.

As for learning - IMHO dotNET is and will be similar to the history of VB. By the end, how many generalist "VB experts" were there? Domains were already established, as they will in dotNET. That's fine, because it makes it easier for data experts from other tools to find their niche. But I guess that's another thread. ;-)