>MSDE sounds like a good solution for a small company that is just getting their feet wet with a web application, but isn't ready to pay for the full version of SQL Server. But you are right, it will take some time to develop the VFP tools to manage MSDE.

I don't think I said anything about developing tools in VFP to manage MSDE. That would be quite different than writing a VFP application that accesses data stored in MSDE. There are already tools to manage MSDE; for example, I understand that Access does a fairly decent job of this, although I can't speak from personal experience.

You probably already know this, but what's lacking in MSDE (or at least in the part you can redistribute with your app), from the database administrator's POV, are the Enterprise Manager and the Query Analyzer, which are two of the primary tools for managing SQL Server databases. As a developer you can get these tools as part of SQL Server 7.0 Developer Edition, and use them to build and test your apps, but you can't redistribute them so therefore you can't use them to manage the live database at your client's location.

I don't know if you're looking for references here or not, but if so one place to start is http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/downloads/addins/msde/default.asp. Again, my apologies if I'm saying stuff you may already know better than I do.