Hi george,
>
>One significant difference between an SQL Server table and a VFP table is that the latter is file based. This is part of the definition of what an IASM table is. IOW, you cannot open an ISAM table without retrieving all the records.

I'm sure you don't mean this. Of course I could OPEN a VFP table without retrieving all its records, else it would be impossible to work with 2 gig files on a network.

I'll give you the tables are file based argument, but the database container itself is a container that could be compared with the one datafile a DBMS stores its information in. To me this is not as black and white here.

>You can with SQL Server because it requires you to describe what records you want. A VFP query requires that the underlying table (all of it) be opened and, therefore, cannot be considered to be the same.

How could you partually open a table ? I don't quite get what you're saying here. Both VFP and SQL have optimizing mechanisms (e.g. rushmore) that make it possible only to retrieve the records you want without sequentially scanning the table.

>One can treat SQL Server tables as ISAM, but that could be a significant design mistake depending on the underlying nature of the table(s).

The internal schema of a Server DBMS is ussually seperated from the external one, thus it is ussually invisible for the developers of how it is implemented. Therefore I don't see the value of if a Server DBMS is ISAM based or not. In VFP OTOH there is no distinction between internal or external scheme's: Index files, Tables, physical storage are very visible and could be accessed from VFP (or the filesystem) directly. This is both VFPs strenght as weakness: On one hand you have maximum control and flexibility, OTOH the 'encapsulation' and therefore the protection and authorisation of the VFP database is virtually null.

Walter,