>> It's that views are too limiting, that's all. They had their years, and used them well, IMO.

Fair enough, no point rehashing old debates... he says, before reminiscing that it was the RV that caused me to go VFP when incentivized to take a different direction in 1995. RV's automatic/free SQL Injection-proof parameterized queries were fabulous, as was multi-table updateable Views as long as you're careful. I agree the fixed SELECT, parameters and ORDER BY is limiting compared to SPT or even CursorAdaptor, but technically RV is just a wrapper around SPT so you can turn any SPT cursor into a pseudo-RV easily enough.

Anecdote: it's useful to be able to email or otherwise share encrypted database files for audit and other purposes, with the front end needing to hook into the portable database (rather than usual backend database) without an extra development path or a big installation rigmarole. In the end, Android's SQLLite was closest, though still needed an oddball ODBC driver; Microsoft's portable offerings were insecure and still are AFAIK. Anyway, we figured out how to create encrypted files that recreate a set of cursors (not dbfs) at the client and then create LVs against the cursors to mimic the backend. Mostly memory-resident, so reasonably secure- and no extra installation needed.