Hi Jim,

If you mean MS SQL when you say SQL, then Yes. It is a very good tool. I tried it out when Visual Studio 6 first came out. I wrote a small test application using an activeX grid to link into a database that I upsized via the upsize wizard. I use ADO OLEDB to link into a table within the database. It used the OLEDB commands to go to the top of grid, bottom of grid, next, previous, (don't recall the exact commands, but remember there were many to learn), etc. I also subclassed the SQL builder class found in the Visual FoxPro foundation classes so I could fetch recordset. If someone didn't know better, they would think the application was pure Visual FoxPro from appearance.

It provided a stable platform. It was interesting that the grid columns bound into the MSSQL tables fields, so that any input made to the grid immediately updated the table. I wasn't use to this sync behavior and was more comfortable using an async method to connect to a backend serve whether two tier or three tier were used.

I found MS SQL to be somewhat slower in this two tier configuration when compared to native Visual FoxPro. I also found ADO OLEDB to be much more ackward than working with native tables. I suppose I could have used a traditional wizstyle grid and grabbed recordsets from the backend and converted them to a cursor which could be used as the record source for the traditional grid, but I never got around to this; although, I did experiment with recordset to cursor conversions annd vise versa. If I had gone this route, it seems to me that I have an extra step going both directions and I would lose the benefit of the sync connection.

The activeX grid was very simplistic with no methods and few properties in which to build business logic or to validate input. My evaluation indicate a significant re-write of my current file share applications would be necessary to make the application available under a MS SQL backend.

I also installed MSDE, but at that time there was no way to administer it, except through the dos cmd window via SQL commands, unless I resorted to the GUI that installed with the full version of MSSQL.

I have also worked with mSQL, MySQL, and Postgres on Linux and Windows platforms using both a two tier and three tier approach.

I visited a link recently about Homeland Security in which visitors could post comments. For some reason MS SQL was not a very highly respected database according to commits made by user of Oracle and DB2. The Oracle and DB2 users opinions about MS SQL are analogous to your opinion of Visual FoxPro. <s>

LelandJ