>now if a stupid user shuts the power off the sql server. I couldnt answer that one. its never happend to me (kocking on wood) Now machines, NT or otherwise are not perfect, and disk drives do go out, and power outages do happen. So of course you do your best, back up and install ups's But I can tell you, I have not had to recreate a sql server file, becuase of a stupid workstation user, but I have had to using networked drives accessing dbf's dbc.

SQL Server, since it uses a transaction log also goes a long way toward protecting data integrity at system shutdown.

>But I belive that you are asking the wrong question. SQL server technology is in my opinion, Better. Far better, Based on the two or three tier approach of communicating between workstation and server, but also, the ability to create client server apps and the ability of using a simple dial up access does become a reality. However, there is a big big gotcha.

You can easily write an n-tiered application with VFP data as well, so this point is moot. Same for using a dial-up connection. Using 'the ability to create client server apps' as a reason to use SQL Server is circular.

> any sql based solution over dbf's these days.

I don't think that such broad statements are helpful. I use and love SQL Server, and would recommend it to anyone for the right applications, but there are definitely places where SQL Server and MSDE aren't the right choice: any single user application where the data resides on the desktop machine (as opposed to the server) is a good candidate for VFP data. Any small, seldomly used, or very simple application could be a bad use of a server database (unless the database server was already running for another application). An application that has to be downloaded over the internet and installed by an end-user makes a good candidate for VFP data.

As usual, the answer to this question is it depends. The advent of a free version of SQL Server (MSDE) only takes one factor (cost) out of the equation, but there are still others.