Thank's Craig,
As I said, I know that a "big boy" DB is appropriate, but we are currently running file sharing rather than C/S. This is great on LAN but too slow over WAN. We do have some good HW and SW resources here, but my budget for upgrade has been cut to virtually nothing for now. Pound foolish? Yes! But that's the facts. I will need to find low cost or existing solutions.
I know there are some "off the shelf" apps that claim to meet our volume needs that come with DBs that are distrubuted freely or at modest costs. These are not VFP solutions and probably not SQL. I also recently heard of MySQL as a possible solution but I am not aware of its limitations or compatibility with VFP. Our company will probably move to a DB2 standard sometime, since IBM has its foot well into the senior management offices. Again I don't know what problems I would face trying to use DB2 as a back end for VFP.
If I don't find a low cost solution, the powers that be will turn it over to our IT area where a team of programmers who know nothing about the business issues at hand will churn out a VB app using JET or worse yet an Access app (not even penny wise).
The right answer is VFP with SQL Server if you ask me, but I would still appreciate more comments on options.

Brent