>> I've heard rumors that Microsoft is going to try to push VFP into the middle tier with . . . its so hard even to say the words . . . Visual
.. Basic at the front end and Sequel Server at the back end. Is their any truth to these rumors?

Actually, MS is trying to push all of the development tools into the middle tier. They don't think front-ends should be written in anything other than IE 4.0 specific DHTML. Since VB - for the most part - has inferior data access to VFP and has slower data access than VFP this actually is better for VFP than it is VB. Of course, if the front-end is not going to be IE 4.0 than MS would prefer VB or VFP.