You need to check you facts about VFP not having service packs since 5.0.

From what I recall 6.0 had 4 or 5 service packs.

7.0 had one (not sure if there were 2 or not)

8.0 has not had one yet but I'm sure it will

As for planning about scalability this is like developing applications for single user first then changing to multi user. We built all of our single user apps as multi user whether or not the client asked or not. Why not plan for it now.

SQL/MSDE does not complicate development at all. As a matter of fact I think it simplifies it. We have an application that runs in more than 35 sites world wide. To run the applicatoin we just change our IP address in oour database list table and we can run the application over the wire just like we were there. No pcanywhere, no terminal service just the plain old TCP IP network we have. Try this with VFP. We did foxpro apps over a T1 over 10 years ago and it was not the greatest pefformance in the world. As a matter of fact it was pretty bad. I cant imagine that this has changed.

As for upgrades. SQL server upgrades to structures, data are not any more complicated than VFP. We can alter structures with scripts just like VFp can do it with programs.

SQL also has features that cannot be repliacated with VFP. We talk about scalability. How about redundancy. It is actually simple to create a replicated server with SQL server you can use replication or transaction log shipping. If your main server dies then you change a couple of settings and you are off to the races. How do you do this in VFP without extensive coding ? It sure does not come built in.

Just my 2cents.

Rodman