Mark,

My experience of MSDE/SQL Server is that it is much more resilliant than DBFs in this sort of situation.

You need to consider the following though:

1. Changing to MSDE will probably mean a pretty major rewrite of your app
2. Installing MSDE on home users computers will probably bump up the minimum system requirements for your users.
3. You may need to consider installing a named instance of MSDE so you don't conflict with any other programs using the engine -- alternatively you may be able to check whether MSDE is already installed and just add your database(s)
4. There's a bunch more admin you'll be responsible for on the users machines -- patches are now required for MSDE as well as your VFP app.

All in all, I'd be hesitant about distributing an app based on MSDE to home users (where the data store is generally on the same machine as the app). You might be better served by getting one of the redistributable VFP data repair tools like SDT (whih I love BTW) and incorporating it into your app so that it checks and fixes any problems at app startup.

Cheers,

Andrew

>We have an application used by people on their home computers and we are having lots of problems with corrupt DBFs, because they constantly turn off their computers, have power outages, kids turn off the machine, etc. No amount of "training" has helped. So, we're wondering does MSDE have corruption problems like DBFs? Would MSDE be more stable in such an environment?