Hiya JVP ----
This is a peculiar issue for Fox people to be agonizing over. SQL Anywhere is dirt cheap and performs much the same purpose as MSDE, yet no one has ever griped about it. Why? Because at the scale that people would think of using SQL Anywhere, one tends to keep the native Fox DBF format.
If you think your app is going to be scaling up in the future, use remote views, SPT, whatever and hook to whatever makes you happy.... If not, use DBFs.
BTW: I agree with your assessment of SQL Server and the price.
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>I hear your pain here, and I don't entirely disagree. Then again, if you have 10-20 users, SQL-Server is not that pricey. Out of the box, you get 5 connections. 5 more, that is about $150. So, you are talking about $1,000-1,200. For a dept-wide app, that is not bad. If I were charging $30,000 for an app, the price of SQL-Server makes up less than 10% of the price.
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>When it comes to what MSDE was made for, this bullet point from the web site really hits home:
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Build mobile computing solutions that support merge replication with a central SQL Server
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John Koziol, ex-MVP, ex-MS, ex-FoxTeam. Just call me "X"
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" - Hunter Thompson (Gonzo) RIP 2/19/05