>I would love to use ADO since it would allow me to use the Date type in SQL Server 2008. But I am switching from ADO to ODBC too simply because VFP then maps VARCHAR(MAX) type to Memo correctly. ADO, unfortunately, maps VARCHAR(MAX) to C(255) type.

Just a gut feeling:
Making ADO work with VarChar through some Meta-Data processing and fixing a few issues Cetin encountered should be doable. Piping a datatype via ODBC when the driver knows nothing about it sounds more errorprone, but you might experiment with specific update&insert statements, which could also be modified in the before_hooks or generally as property.

Keep us posted if you try one of those...

regards

thomas