>The bottom line...I don't contrain my development based on third-world limitations. If I had a simple app to write, the choice to use dbf's would be behind the use of MSDE.

In terms of a "third world app", I will maintain that I can write a more "sophisticated" app, faster, using DBF'S, "native" DML/DDL, than you will ever do using MSDE.

While you're dinking around with views, SQL pass thru, blah, blah ... I will have my app up and generating benefits while you're jerking around with UML, data spaces, connections, views, pass thru, partitioning, whatever ...

Your "ultimate solution" will probably look better on some over head projector, but it will come in several months later (at least) than the "25 cent" solution. Your "benefits" of scalability, recoverability, connectivity, MS suckability, etc. are often figments of the (non-user's) imagination ... ie. they have no "current" relevance in the "third world". "Planning for the *future*", in this context, is also BS ... (IMO).

John, your "solutions" sound no different from what IBM, Price Waterhouse, Arther Anderson (LOL) have been flogging over the years ... Usually a "canned" solution, that lacked imagination, and that catered to "their" bottom line; ie. "we'll" come in and make it right ...