Hi Tom,

>Excuse me for getting into this but here I am! Just a few comments below.

You're welcome,

>>>I don't totally agree that SQL is harder to maintain than VFP. IMO, it's a on the contrary whether small or large volume of data. VFP Data Engine while it is powerful is somewhat a problem when it comes to maintenance. Not to do anything in its Indexes in a month will make your system suffer.

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>One application we created for the medical field ran a delete index/ create index at an off time (0200) each day. By using SDT we had no down time due to data problems.
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A good strategy. However, Jess's statement was based on 24 x 7 based applications. IOW, no downtime allowed. Indeed for this type of applications VFP is too small IMO. In these cases a solution in a well configured DBMS like Oracle or SQL-server might be more appropriate.

>>>With SQL-Server you can sleep as sound as you want. This is the very reason why we have 2 hospital system versions: VFP/SQL for high-end and VFP/VFP for low-end. The price of the first is more than twice higher than the price of the latter. And I always ask my boss not to promote the latter because of a lot of headache in maintaining its DB engine. VFP/VFP is just an option in a worst case scenario.
>
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>SQL Server is not the "cure all" to data problems. If we go down it costs $10,000 a minute. We use SQL Server on all our data servers. We had SQL Server crash for no reason that could be determined on two occasions last year. We had to repair the problem and "get on with production". It is not nice to see 5000 people doing nothing and waiting for the database to be repaired.
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I think that "shit happens". Obvious none of all available DBMS is bullet proof and crash free.


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>I have been to just about every Microsoft Kick Off. At the SQL Server 7.0 Kick Off, Steve Ballmer stated, "SQL Server 7.0 does not require an administrator"! I am still laughing! Our reality may not be the same as yours but come now, can there not be at least one exception to this marketing B.S.? Does anyone out there run SQL Server 7.0 or 2000 without an administrator? If so, what type of application, how many users and what is the purpose of the app?
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IMO you're right, a server DBMS (like SQL-server) needs an administrator. What are you going to do when the server crashes or another exception occurs ? someone has to know how to solve these problems ? Just like each application should have a super-user which can handle the most frequent questions or 'problems' before calling the supplier or programmer of the product.

Walter,