Ron

Your "trouble" is that the local MS and Dell would be delighted to see your client running SQL Server on a nice new box and can be called on by the competitor to talk you down, unless you can offer the same facility.

With respect, and assuming that this is the strategy, I don't believe you have time to "head them off" by the trick-shot of simply importing everything to VFP and "hey presto: the new version!"

Short term strategy:

Invest in xCase from Resolution.com to move your data into a data model so you can create scripts that create backends and views for SQL Server, Oracle, or local tables. Import all your tables into that. Then show the client that "sure you can give him data in Oracle, SQL server or whatever if his budget is big enough". This heads off the FUD from your competitor. The client will almost certainly ask your advice, at which point you can open your eyes wide and say "well, we don't want to waste your money by upgrading to this new thing just because it is new, we would have offered it already if we thought your data was at serious risk or if we could see a good reason... but I don't think you should have to pay all that money just because a salesman says so. And, well let me tell you, it is still a secret... but we are working on our own latest version that will run on your existing computers in a Browser and be much easier to use and maintain than a whole new version... tell you what, I'll promise you a special price of $XXX,XX now and when the time comes for the new version you and I can sit down and look at all these database and cost issues and decide where we should invest your money wisely."

In other words, leverage your relationship to head off the slick marketing speil of the competitor.

Long Term Strategy: you need to do this properly! You are lucky in a way not having gone to VFP already because you can probably "leapfrog" VFP fat client and look at going straight to a Browser app. Look at www.west-wind.com. The code you write with this tool is fairly familiar to procedural FP developers and you won't need to learn all the peculiarities of VFP code straight off. All your existing code should copy straight over though you might want to investigate the "local" keyword. <g>

Since I'm advising re tools <g> I also like Dreamweaver for creating Web pages, it produces clean html (and cleans up junk from other authoring systems) and can be bought over the web.

Not everybody would agree with this, but in your shoes that's certainly what I'd do.

HTH

Regards

JR


Regards

JR