>>I started using SQL Server with the 2005 version. And I think they still have the "old" features in SQL Server 2017; not enhanced but still there. I think so many people use TEXT that MS may have it for another 5-10 years. Which is enough for me :)
People still doing OK with Fox will recognize the sentiment! Meanwhile RS has suggested another cast that should survive indefinitely. But before you set about wholesale updates, might pay to perform a sanity check looking at the efficiency of the cast?
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
