>The silence on this topic is deafening. :)

I suspect that one reason is that people who have gone to MSDE/SQL Server have done so for other than strictly performance reasons, and as long as the response obtained with MSDE/xxx is acceptable, they HAVE TO live with it.

I seem to remember something by Rick Strahl when his primo site moved from VFP to SQL Server and that it was much slower but acceptable. That, of course, goes back a fair (or is it unfair) bit and I think the folks ultimately disappeared for other reasons.

Personally, there would be so many variables to such a comparison that it would be difficult to make something meaningful for the general case, I think. In addition, one who is skilled at VFP and it's SQL set but not skilled at MSDE's SQL capabilities might well bias any such test because MSDE has many more ways, and very neat ones too, that certain cats can be skinned. To do something a VFP-SQL way would not be fair if MSDE offered a different, and possibly way better, way to get the answer.

Just 2cents added, no tax for out-of-province delivery