Hi Thomas,

>Yeah, vfp was born to single CPU and single thread parents ;-)

First, may I say that I agree :-)

I read carefully your post. And I agree on most of the other points you mentioned as well. As a die-hard vfp-er! What I feel on this new generation of software is the following:
- of course some of the parentage is common with alternative offerings made by IBM (forgotten but should not) MS, Sybase, Oracle and pals. But this also a brand new dev to some extent, a new code base for most of it!
- the speed advantage is massive and fully based on "workstation" horse power, à la fox,
- the cost is nil; you download and play!

Last but not least, the "open source" advantage. Not false promises à la MS 2.0, à la google or Facebook with overly complex stuff. A real promise of effective tools supporting effective advantage made by communities that originates from universities (python for instance), often European ones, or courageous individuals (sqlite for instance).

Munich and Amsterdam universities are the places to look for modern db ideas by the way. Great to hear as a German or a French fellow! The code is open, the technology is open (you can even read the advanced research papers in support of this tech, should you wish it!).

Great to hear as a European citizen:-)

Daniel