If you're at it. could you provide the full and working equivalent of the example rather than XML? And then please tell me which one is easier and has less dependencies on installed addons ?

I'll have to look up the syntax - I'm about 99.9% sure there are multiple ways to do it in 1 or 2 lines of code, I've just usually used XML for tasks like that.

I recently had to reformat my laptop and start from scratch, and currently I only have bare-bones stuff installed, and so I don't know of any dependencies.

As far as which is easier - again, T-SQL '05 has better set-based operations than VFP, that's what I meant about getting data in/out. VFP is great for things like that, I just believe that the increased compliance with SQL-99 gives T-SQL the edge.

Kevin