We have been designing our VFP with client/server in mind. Using updatable views, using xCASE for data modeling, etc... Now some of our clients want to move into a database server. I have a few questions:

1. How steep is the learning curve for the server side programming/setup?

2. What is the increased cost factor for developing and maintaining a client/server application vs one that uses local VFP tables?

3. What database server do you recommend and what are the best training resources?

4. For a client that needs transaction tracking ASAP, does anyone know of some routines (perhaps ones that I could drop into the DBC as stored procedures) that would add transaction tracking to local VFP tables? If someone knows of any, how close does the library come to providing the data security of a database server (i.e. real-time backup of transaction file, automatic recovery, etc.)?