>Most of my clients are small business types. Of course I use VFP almost exclusively to design and write their apps. But one thing that keeps bugging me is when will it be my turn to fix a corrupt table and the all the grief that come with it. Fortunately, that day has not come yet, but I feel it will soon.

>There is no way that I'll convience one of my "MOM-POP" shops to fork out some bucks to purchase a client server like MS SQLServer or Oracle.

>My question is is there a better tables/database that is "more" stable and "reliable" then the VFP native tables?

In addition to the valuable soltuions offered already, I dont see a solution which includes postgresql. A free sql server, which runs on both windows and Linux.

clent server database's have features like speed and stablity with drawbacks like cost, and additional ram requirments. but these days with hardware and ram being so cheep, those issues are going away.

Some apps require features which are only avail in Ms Sql, other apps you might be able to get by with using Mysql. (considering the lack of transaction and subquerry support)

Having a disconnected database, from your app can help, but what database server becomes a matter of your choice, what os do you feel good with, what company do you have experience with for tech support. ? Cost vs features, stability vs speed. and so on.

There is no one clear cut answer.
beef up your dbf;s with stonefield. or move to client server... then you really have your work cut out for you.

Bob Lee