Walter,
I understand your observation, however (you knew there would be a however didn't you :-))
The problem I see with it is this. As it is now VFP's SQL is not directly comaprable to any other SQL implementation adn that causes some design problem when moving an app from local data to client/server data. The problems and confusion that is already present with regards to VFP's filtered cursor is enough for me to not want another proprietary optimization emthod for queries in VFP.
I can do what you are describing right now by writing my own set relations and so forth or I can choose to implement using SQL. Having SQL create an xBase environment just doesn't seem like an area of the rpoduct that I would like to see the developers spending their time