I am currently doing just that.
The advantage I have is that I convinced my management to let me create the application in a 3 Tier approach when it was being developed. That made the conversion much easier in that I only had to change the data access calls to point to the new SQL Server database.

I would be very happy answer any questions you have about what I went through.

>We are considering a conversion of a large VFP 8 application from native VFP databases to use an SQL server based back-end.
>
>The application opens tables via USE and via form data environment. It uses SEEKS, LOCATES, REPLACES, etc. on the tables and TABLEUPDATE to update the tables.
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>We would have to move the data structures over to a SQL backend, then update the code to access the new database. There is a lot of business logic in the vfp source code (do whiles with replaces, etc.)
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>I realize there are books from Hentzenwerke that discuss using MySQL with VFP, and we will be looking at them. We also have West-wind and their business objects, which look good. However, to use them requires your app be designed up-front for them. Or re-written to use them.
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>1. Has anyone actually performed such a conversion on a large VFP application? (606 forms, 296 prgs, 178 report files) I'd like to talk to you if you have.
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>2. Are there any drop-in replacements for USE/SEEK/REPLACE, that translate them to SQL on the backend. It seems technically possible to create a USEsql(), SEEKsql(), etc. that you could use in place of the native function calls that would get to 80% of the way to an SQL backend without having to refactor all your business logic. Has anyone seen anything like this?
>
>Thanks for your help,
>Chris