Jim,

>>>I thought VFP was in the family of xBase/dbase language because it is using the "DBF" extension on it's tables.
>>
>>No. That isn't it. xBase was a term that was coined by the industry when an attempt was made to standardize the dBase language and Ashton-Tate threatened to sue because dBase was their trademark. It was applied to the language, not the file format. Saying that VFP is xBase does nothing but hurt it.
>>
>>
>I agree that defining VFP as "xBase" hurts VFP overall. Now if we can only get MS folk (especially those who write books) to drop the term when referring to VFP we might get somewhere.
>
>I feel the same way about "ISAM". Are there really that many differences between the way SQL Server will store/retrieve data (at least under basic default conditions) and the way VFP does?
>
>Cheers
>JimN



Apparently so. Evidently the wizards at Fox Holdings (aka. Fox Software) using their skills in memory management made FoxPro operate with the speeds it did in conjunction with the ISAM data access method. Remember, Access uses the Jet engine which apparently is a btrieve type method.

It's all about speed.

ISAM is still the fastest way to get data on/off the local hard drive. SQL uses btrieve but there's more overhead and speed isn't the primary issue anyway.