>I would inquire credibility of 'front-end limitations'. Actually, VFP itself is superior product on both ends but with negative perception in public. Why it's happened? I 'don't know', however I've never seen trustworthy explanations from technical standpoint.

I think VFP5 is Microsoft's best kept secret!

As an old PB programmer I would say that PB's best feature is the "DataWiindow". It's worst is the requirement of "Regeneration" for each level of inheritance. Also, PB slows down a lot after the third level of inheritance. Dividing your tables and reports into separate "pebbles" (*.pbl) and keeping the size of the EXE down are other problems. A nagging problem was corruption of the EXE stub.

The RAD fronend was well thought out and a joy to use. However, since it worked mainily against backends via the ODBC, one always had to start from an ODBC before one could switch to another ODBC. Those menu options weren't the friendlyist. In the application startup method is was always wise to put a complete ODBC login script as a standby incase the default login failed.

As a recent newbie to VFP5 I was stunned by two things: the stability and speed of the DBF environment (not DBC), and the very easy to use RAD. VFP5's weakest link, IMHO, is the menu system. It hasn't been classed yet and I hope the next version does that. Also, I prefer PB and VB's method of menu development.

Jerry