Jos, thanks for the additional information. Definitely valuable input and rare input from VFPers who jumped ship or intend to. The function list is indeed impressive and up to it!

Daniel

PS:
>"what I have found is that a WinDev data file which has the same number of records and fields as a VFP DBF will be often much larger. I don’t know why but suspect this has to do with supporting the additional functionally built into the database such as automatic index optimizations, automatic re-usage of deleted record space, etc. etc."

It's IMHO all about VFP dbf being a fixed-sized (except for the "memos"). This, coupled with the cdx, did offer - in its time - had its own merit: data-drilling speed (except for the memos). This simplification was an advantage... In its time. There are now better solutions for data-drilling, for instance vectorial db-s à la duckdb, pandas data tables...