>John, this has to be one of the most salient posts on this entire thread. I am >disappointed at the general lack of response.

>It would be extremely interesting to see figures that quantify risks / >performance / scalability of Visual FoxPro against SQL Server both out of the box >and also after taking into account the addition of custom classes designed to >facilitate SQL Server kinds of activity. For example, true 24 x 7 operations, which >would require Shared Mode recreation of Indexes, etc.

Houston,

Thanks for responding and sharing your ideas. I wasn't sure whether I was being too obtuse. I feel that these type of objective benchmarks and risk assessment numbers cut right to the heart of our marketing VFP applications. There is no doubt in my mind that conversations between developers and managers/customers require marshalling and that information can get lost in address translation. I'm sure that on first meeting, managers/customers have as much trust for us as developers as we do for other tradespeople (i.e auto mechanics, plumbers, carpenters, etc.) partly because we don't have objective, quantifiable data on VFP vs. SQL Server to help make a choice. One can get MTBF (mean time before failure) ratings for hard drives that help us to trust the technology. Managers are skilled in assessing risk and weighing cost/benefit. I feel that performance benchmarks and data loss risk assessments would go a long way in helping restore confidence in VFP. So would a distillation of VFP best practices. Managers love consistency too.

BTW, have anything more to say on the shared use mode recreation of indexes?

John