Stephen,

Craig jumped in already with answers to most of these.

On the issue of reporting, you have two different roads you can take -
1) Crystal or other non-VFP third party (R&R is another one) - these put the emphasis back to the developer on reporting or the advanced power user.

2) Foxfire attempts to make it easier for end-user reporting with albeit mixed results. Since it uses VFP, it's a little easier to debug in the sense of figuring out what's going on and you can ensure users don't choose the WRONG things (which you can't in Crystal).

Depends on what you want to give your customers.

Andrew MacNeill