>Really, is it possible/sensible to make a VFP .EXE run as a service like SQL-Server or Oracle to perform as a mini-RDBMS box? I was thinking there would be some advantage to having an .EXE that starts up automatically at NT boot-time and could do housekeeping things like re-indexing at certain times, send emails based on certain events, etc.
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It's not well-suited to the role, and the money spent in creating something with VFP that really delivered similar capabilities would far exceed the cost of buying something that was designed as a backend. IOW, you could kludge something up, but it wouldn't do as good a job, and more than likely would exceed the cost of using standard backend products, which generally offer features that VFP's native file system can't furnish.