agreeing with you in tendency (less acerbic) on the other points, but

>VFP's data handling is an anachronism when using a server based database.

Why ? Having the backend where-specified data mirrored in equivalent tables to feed the biz objects
IMHO is more sensible than EF or other ORM frameworks (nHibernate or what do you use ?).
Especially if you are fluent in SQL, why for need 2 different ways to access data ?
Do you prefer LINQ vs. SQL, as it again puts you into a MS-controlled niche compared to SQL on nealy all backends ?

The local cursor engine (pls separate from dbf as backend data store) is the thing keeping me with vfp -
and is the thing making me look at Lianja, as today there is no client financing a cursor cache layer
with SQLite having update automatics similar to Ado.Net or vfp-Cursoradapter,
which is what I'd create to scratch my itches.

regards

thomas