Hi Rick

Thanks for that answer - just one more thing - starting from scratch i can see the attraction of straigt to .NET - but massive working app baes on vfp tables that needs stability - to got to sql server surely is an upgrade - .NET would be a totally new build? what do you think

>>Seems to be a lot of negative stuff floating aroud about .NET data handling - there are thousands of VFP users out there wondering what to do and whild there is a lot of talk no one seems to be really addressesing data handling as you say
>
>Well, I'm not one of those. My point with LINQ is that a lot of folks see it as a panacea that will make .NET more like VFP and I don't think that's the case at all...
>
>>Let me ask you a question to clarify my own mind - what would be your order of preference for data handling capability and why?
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>>VFP table / database / sql
>>SQL Server
>>.NET
>
>For real applications (other than utilities or single user scenarios) I wouldn't even consider using VFP tables any more. Too much of a hassle to deal with maintenance and administration and the occasional corruption. It's just so much easier to deal with this using SQL Server (or another SQL backend) in general.
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>VFP or .NET? Depends on the application. For me I'd almost certainly do it with .NET, but as I've stated before that's my personal preference and there's no necessarily a good technical reason for it. The way I see it there's nothing that I can do in VFP that I can't do in .NET but there are a number of things I can do in .NET that I can't do with VFP or at least can't do in VFP without a lot of low level coding...
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>+++ Rick ---
>
>>
>>I am being steered towards a VFP front end and a SQL server back end - what's you take on this
>>
>>Colin
>>
>>>>Data handling is never, ever, ever brought up as a big issue. Dotnet programmers seem to be making out just fine without "Auto-spanning.......".
>>>
>>>I've showed a bunch of .NET developers how data is manipulated in VFP. Generally it leaves them dumbfounded. Most don't know what they are missing.