>I'm not Mark, but I'll give you mine. What it allows us to do is completely abstract the backend. If one does the proper planning, you could theorhetically go from a dbf to SQL Server/Sybase/Orcale ODBC to ADO to XML and back having only to change one or two lines of code.

George,
not just "theorhetically", but pratically! :)
I'm testing VFP8beta and I've created two DB (with the same structure, of course): one is Sql-server and the other is a VFP DBC.
The app can switch between the two DB simply doing a login to the proper connection.
It's a very simple DB (tre tables in a classic master-detail structure) without triggers/SP, ecc., but it works like a charm!
At startup the user select which connection to use, then the app use the selected db.
All is managed with cursoradapters, it's really a great thing.
(Also, given the fact our own classes (VFP7) needed really low changes to work with CAdapters).

Franco