Hi Joel,

For the life of me I can't figure out, despite many statements like you make here, how "XML" is a "data engine".

What is it that makes XML a "data engine"?

Thanks,
Jim

>Hi Walter,
>
>Some have suggested using XML as the local data engine for meta data in .NET. Definitely not as good as VFP's local engine, but it can be used to eliminate calls to the server when you want to keep the data local.
>
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>>Whether something is enough to carry the fox is not up to you nor me. Anyways about the $5 billion spend mostly on .NET, I can see the benefits of that environment esspecially in the InterNET area. However what really holds me back is the lack of a local dataengine. This is precisely the big advantage of VFP over .NET. Handling local data is far more inflexible than with VFP. Doing all the processing of data on a database server like SQL server, is for data intensive applications a real problem. Storing meta data in the executable is cumbersome, processing it without uploading to an external database engine at least difficult. In any case, data driven applications seem to have a fair disadvantage in terms of performance and flexibility when written in .NET for the sole reason it has to let external components do the task. Of course with this becomes the problem of standardisation of handling data internally. One would use MSDE, the other SQL-Server, Oracle, VFPs through OLEDB etc.
>>