Hi Vin,
My point was - there is NO free lunch - it seems to be highly likely that a service pack can inadvertently hose your application - that before you become convinced that an MSDE back end will get you all the great things from Sqlserver, and escape some of the perceived downside of the VFP back end, you should be aware that it is not all plain sailing. I agree with all that you said and the World outside of Universal Thread and VFP may expose you to a bunch of Alligators, when all that you wanted to do was drain the swamp!
Regards
>>There has been a lot of comment here about MSDE being a wonderful, more stable, etc back end to VFP than the native DBC DBF scenario. Anyone thinking of taking this step should log on to microsoft.public.sqlserver.msde and have a read of this months[January 2003 posts. You may be jumping into a swamp full of alligators - roll on VFP8.
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>Well, based on newsgroup postings, you could say that about just about any language or database, right? I mean, come on, take a look at the SQL Server groups -- heck, look at the microsoft.public.fox groups!
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>In fact, about three weeks ago, a guy at an office I work in a few days a week said "if VFP is so great, why do so many people need the universal thread?" (after the smoke stopped steaming out of my ears, I tried to explain the whole newsgroup/thread/internet peer support concept, to no avail...)
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>Also, keep in mind that the MSDE newsgroup is currently filled with a whole lot of SQL Server worm questions/complaints/updates/etc. This may be your point (I'm not sure): that VFP backends weren't hit with the SQL Server worm. But, that opens up a whole other can of worms above and beyond VFP vs. MSDE. If I am exposing my database to the internet, I'd take the risk of a worm that doesn't affect data over a relatively insecure set of datafiles anyday.
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>Just my two cents.