Ed,

>It's my assumption (purely speculative for the same reason) too. So, if VFP role will be diminished to data transfer only then much of current staff goes away.

But there's nothing to preclude using a VFP based UI as a COM server, that talks to a VFP COM server mid-tier, that talks to what ever backend. And if the VFP UI isn't rich enough you can use something else at the UI layer. Frankly I've been quite happy, more importantly my clients are happy, with all the things that can be accomplished with just a little creativity with the current set of VFP UI components.