>>Dean,
>
>>>Well call me nuts or crazy, but here is what I think can evenually happen to the language of VFP.
>>>
>>>I'm sure you've noticed how simular VFP language is to SQL Server "language".
>>>Therefore, I think language of VFP will eventually become some sort of a scripting language of SQL Server.
>
>>No, you're not nuts. VFP's SQL syntax was deliberately designed to conform to ANSI SQL-92 standards as is SQL Server's.
>
>>On the other side of things, in the late 1980's Microsoft worked with Ashton-Tate with the idea of using dBASE IV as the front end set of tools for SQL Server.
>
>
>Hi George.
>It just seems like a natural "progression" for the foxpro language. And since most of us know it already we are in good position, if it does happen.
>I would say foxpro has something going for it that dBase does not - power and speed.
>
>We use SQL2000, and it is good to see that you no longer have to jump through 10 gazillion hoops to change a structure of a table. It is VFP-like to manage. Just change structure and go.

Dean,

The ill-fated Ashton-Tate/Microsoft SQL Server idea fell apart for two reasons, interestingly enough, very closely connected reasons. On the one hand, dBASE users were used to be able to jump from record to record, and update immediately. At the time such a mechanism (namely, scrollable cursors) didn't exist. The other reason was that as it is, SQL Server was and is a set based system and dBASE (and Fox) are file based. Basically, file based systems are known as ISAM (Indexed Sequential Access Method) systems.

The problem is that someone who is used to an ISAM system may tend to treat SQL Server tables in the same way. This isn't to say that you can't treat it as such, but rather the nature of the table should conform to a specific set of conditions so that performance is acceptable. Usually, the table needs to be flat and the data set (number of records) small.