Hi Vlad,

Firstly, I've just read through what I've written below and I apologise in advance if it comes across too strongly.

>Hi!
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>Sorry, I do not want to offend you, but you have to separate development in VFP and development of SQL Server. MSDE is included into the VFP7 package to help VFP developers to do not depend on the main server and develop *VFP* applications that use data from SQL Server more quickly with using local MSDE server. MSDE is *NOT* included to develop SQL Server database, though you can do this, by inconvinient ways using commands running from VFP development environment. See further comments. Again, do not take offence - VFP7 and SQL Server are completely differet products.

SQL Server and MSDE are NOT "completely different products". MSDE is the data engine of SQL Server with a compiler switch set that artificially throttles performance when there are more than 5 simultaneous connections and without any of the CLIENT utilities (although it does ship with SQL-DMO).

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>MSDE is a free engine for development opnly, accordingly to the Microsoft licensing. Youchave to use the full SQL Server version in production. As a result, Microsoft provides only MSDE. No client utilities and no help files.

Again, not true. You CAN (and are encouraged to) distribute MSDE-based apps (see the redist.txt file). MS wants you to do this so your little royalty-free apps can grow up to be big SQL-Server CAL-requiring apps (when you get past 5 simultaneous connections) without any re-coding on your behalf.

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>Anyway, you can install many things from other products. Enterporise manager - from Visual studio or SQL Server Client Utilities; help - all is in MSDN etc.
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>BTW, you still can use SQL Server 6.5. help files. After installing MSDE, MSSQL65 folder is still on my disk and I stillc an run BINN\INFOVIEW.EXE and see all SQL Server help from there.

If they only have MSDE (and therefore don't have Books Online installed) I'd strongly encourage people to use the SQL2000 docs included in MSDN rather than rely on the 6.5 docs. There are MANY things that have changed since 6.5 (7.0 was a watershed version and 2k has continued to evolve from there).

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>>Third, this is perhaps not an issue with MSDE so much as it's an issue with the philosophy of including some sort of SQL Server in the VFP7 box. I've had a little exposure to the SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Manager and it's a nice way to manage SQL Server. I understand that MSDE is bare-bones and one of the things it lacks is client-side utilities but I question if this is a good idea for developers. When learning a new (to me) product I appreciate all the help I can get.
>>
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>You can manage everything by commands from VFP ;) In command window:
>nn=SQLEXEC("Driver=SQL Server;")
>=SQLEXEC(nn,"CREATE DATABASE Test")
>=SQLEXEC(nn,"USE TEST")
>=SQLEXEC(nn,"CREATE TABLE ......")
>str=FileToStr(getfile()) && load some *.sql file here, assure no "?" in that script otehrwise
> && SQLEXEC throw errors
>=SQLEXEC(nn,str)

I assume that you meant to do a SQLCONNECT or a SQLSTRINGCONNECT at the beginning there.

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>You can run above way standard SQL Server procedures and so on. Of course, Enterprise manager is better. But for development you usually already have SQL Server database. For development SQL Server database - its another story, if you want to do this in convinient way - buy it. Its usual licensing story. This is licensing issue. MSDE was always without client utilities and I doubt MS ever include them - just because MSDE comes for free for development only as a lightweight SQL Server engine useful for installing on developer's machine and develop applications.

Again, MSDE is NOT just "useful for installing on developer's machine and develop applications" - it's an engine that can be (and often is) distributed royalty-free for applications that have a small concurrent user requirement, but still require a high-end RDBMS engine.

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>>VS6 included a copy of SQL Server 7.0 Developer's Edition (and MSDE 1.0) in the Plus Pack. I never installed this product but presumably it comes with full documentation and client-side tools. Why could we not get a similar license for SQL Server 2000 with VFP7?
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>>Overall, my impression of what we get in the VFP7 package is somehow "MSDE Lite", which is not packaged to take advantage of MS's own update process and which is not a very attractive introduction to SQL Server.
>>
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>Remember that MSDE is *NOT* SQL Server. You going to develop applications in VFP7, right? For development of SQL Server databases and SP - buy appropriate tools.

I'd agree that you should get the developer edition of SQL2000 to do development, but there are plenty of good reasons to use MSDE.

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>>I'm hoping someone from the MS Fox Team will respond, but if anyone else has any workarounds or can point out obvious stuff I've missed, I'd appreciate it.
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>MSDE with license for running in production environment and client tools will be just SQL Server, that you should buy. Do not request too much for free.

Cheers,

Andrew