>>>Don't hear so much about which db to migrate to that fits the "crash safe" criteria I have for using VFP tables:
>>>
>>> * very difficult to harm the tables in power failures, random reboots, voltage spikes etc
>>> * easy to strip out and rebuild table headers (and an app can sense and do this automatically)
>>> * yet high performance ...
>>>

>
>Why are you interested in stripping out and rebuilding table headers? Is that just to fix corrupted tables?
>
>Not an ssue with SQL Server.

It may not be but folk who use my app are very unlikely to want to install SQL Server.

* few would want install anything that needs any fiddling with at all (I guess this includes me re other people's apps)
* I'm trying to reduce the download from the current 36Mb (My app + VFP runtimes + Common Controls)

If I didn't have 150,000 lines of VFP I wouldn't mind using IronPython or similar (tiny runnable + framework support already on a >=XP Sp2 Windows machine). Someone said use Firebird - but when I looked at the web site, it excludes support for Vista and Win7 , unless my eyes deceive me.

Your direct question is why would I want to strip out and rebuild table headers - it is to fix corrupted tables without resorting to telling the user to restore from the last backup. I'm sure the administrator of a fully supported SQL Server set-up would never say this but, I repeat, my users are out in the wilds where there are no administrators or, if there are, I can guarantee they are going to say "restore from the last backup" ...