Eddie,

My company has been involved in porting our VFP-based system to a client/server system using Oracle as the database and a VFP front end (we're also using SQL Server and DB2 as our back-end database). Before now, I thought we were the only ones to take on such a non-standard approach to client/server but I'm glad to see other companies are doing the same.

In terms of market share for Oracle front ends, I'll take a stab at it:

Oracle DB w/

Powerbuilder: 55%
Oracle Forms/Developer 2000: 20%
VB: 10%
C/C++/VC++/Java: 15%
VFP: < 1%

As you can probably see, the overwhelming majority of software developers and IT departments use Powerbuilder and/or Oracle as the front end, although Java is becomming increasingly common as an Oracle front-end (especially now that Oracle 8i comes with a virtual Java machine or JVM). Since VB is soooo popular as a front end tool, it probably eats up about 10% of the market share w/ Oracle DB (I'm sure VB market share is much higher with SQL Server).

Obviously, VFP is the odd man out as a front end to ANY server database (almost always used with local VFP databases) but not because it's lacking as a client/server tool. I think it's a very powerful front-end for server databases and has the ability to use different server databases within the same VFP database container. The market and popular opinion, however, think otherwise.

Good luck with your project and I hope this helps!

-JT