>>>I am hoping that VFP can demonstrate a strong connection to .Net even without being part of the CLR. How this can be achieved I have no idea.

acording to Microsoft (see Steve Balmer´s video), the connection comes with XML Web Services.
Also, if your application is component-based, .NET can use your component, and your applications can use .NET "components", wrapped to be compliant with COM.
Please, anyone tells if I´m wrong... that´s what I´ve read...


>>>Are you looking at any CLR languages yourself?

Mark, I´m compelled to take a look at C#. I was reading a CoDe Magazine´s article, that teaches how to create a C# component to acess data... Jesus, for a VFP´er, that´s gruesome... :-)
anyway, I´ll try to learn that...