>Don't really know much about it, other than it has some positive critics, esspecially from the VFP crowd.

You should look into it and figure out why many in the VFP crowd like it. Then we'll talk some more.

>I'm using SQL2000, going to upgrade to 2005 somewhere this year. I'm however aware of many of the new features in there. Not sure what really makes the difference here from an application development pov. There is not really much that would justify SQL2005 over SQL2000 for the average front end application.

For the average application, there probably isn't, but there are those times where CLR in the engine makes lots of sense. At the same time I can say for the average application, VFP make good sense, but there are times where it just plain stinks.

>Tell me what make you think that we don't know SQL Server??

Compact Edition has lots of promise. Small, fast, efficient.

>
>OTOH, I've seen people on the .NET side claiming knowing SQL server making statments about SQL that really makes you wonder they know what SQL server is about. What its strong and weak points are. How you effectively should use SQL server. The average .NET developer does not know squat about how the SQL engine works under the hood. How SQL statements are optimized and how its using resources. How and on what level concurrency is handled. To be honest the level of expertise of SQL up here is rather limited AFAICS.

There are lots of Fox developers that don't know how to access data in SQL Server. I still see lots of messages on VFP forums where people ask how to get started.

>Though LINQ is a step forward in respect of handling local data, it still has a long way to go. It is not scalable and flexible enough and has some serious limitations to be a real master in handling local data.

So, you're dismissing it? It's a v1.0 release? And what makes you think it won't scale? I'm not saying it's production ready, but it solves lots of problems (and creates some others).