Hi David,

>What do you think about MSDE and have you used it with VFP or VB as an alternative to the VFP engine?

If you write a fileserver based VFP-only application, you gain not much by using MSDE, technically speaking. You have better security and crashes damaging data are less a problem. But using MSDE means that you can't write applications the old way, anymore, you need client/server.

OTOH, if you write Client/Server applications or your client refuses to accept DBF files for their data, MSDE is a great way to start developing, because it is free, easily upgradable to the "real" SQL Server and, I think, even redistributable letting you create demo versions of your application.

I think, there's no way around getting used to MSDE if you want to remain competitive, even if you currently only writing VFP only applications.

As for using them, yes I tried it, but MSDE constantly hangs on my system (a Windows 98 machine). I haven't yet figuered out why, but it seems that it's a problem in the synchronization stuff because canceling an operation in the SQL Server tools results in an error in the WaitForSingleObject() API function. Maybe SP #1 fixes this, I don't know.

Christof