Yeah, we ran into similar trouble and wrote a Very Large Tables system, that uses a numbering system for tables and then provides methods to act on them (usually query them) as a whole.

It went to print in FoxTalk May 1999.
We're now up to BillDetail198 and still growing!


We use FoxPro by choice and Oracle as the back end for large volume (customer billling & financials).

Whether you go to MS, Oracle, or any other leading vendor the alternatives are expensive, as you have per-seat, per-client, per-server or per-CPU licensing to contend with.
You have to decide if the extra cost and complexity is worth the benefits. Like larger table sizes, better security, backups while online, rollback capability, auditing ... and the need for a DBA to keep it working.

There are cheaper alternatives like MySQL, but I've not used them.