>But those sometime cryptic sometime funny field names are IMO good trade-off versus having all other problems down the line.
>Any time you pool sql query into a cursor you will get truncated field names. So any further processing by code that assumes
>original field name is potential source of practical problems and/or bugs.

What? The only time you get the names chopped off is when you export to fox2x. Long names are preserved over selects, no matter where they come from - odbc (including those coming from SQL or Access or a DBC table). I'm using that all the time for the last fifteen years and don't remember having problems of that kind.