John,

>So far, none of you have been able to come up with a single instance of where Fox is more flexible than SQL Server.

Numerous:

1. Using an install of a single zipfile and make the application work on a number of windows versions.
2. You can decide to do the processing of the data of any layer in an n-tier solution.
3. You can use DBF tables stored on a linux server.
4. You don´t need a license for SQL server nor the connection licenses, so cheaper.
5. When throwing in MSDE: Fox does not have a database limit.
6. Fox databases are less suspectible to security issues or virusses.
7. Fox has a far stronger DML for record oriented processing.
8. you can use indexes directly, bypassing the optimizer
9. You can use filtered indexes
10. You don´t need server hardware for an application.
11. You can create portable applications (MSDE see point 5)
12. VFP has integrated relational data handling as no other product I know. ADO is just cumbersome.
13. Datamunging is far superiour with VFPs richs set of both set and record oriented DML.
14. With VFP applications the performance of the datamunging is depended on the client. In a SQL server on the performance of the SQL server. This might be an advantage when a lot of data munging has to be done on a large number of clients. The server won´t be a bottleneck as easy.
15. With VFP you can create a solution within one product. With SQL server you still need a front-end.

I could come up with far more difference. I could come up with the same number of advantages of SQL server, but this is already know at your side I assume....


>As far as the difference between flexibility and scaleability - it is interesting that you don't realize that scaleability is a threshold issue here. In other words, before you can determine whether a tool is flexible, you need to determine whether it can do the job in the first place. In terms of a 10gb table - yes, Fox can do it so long as you horizontally partition the table. That said, when it comes to building indexes, the inflexbility of Fox becomes readily apparent. The lack of full text searching - again - the flexibility of Fox becomes readily apparent.

Of course a SQL server has its advantages also. I´ll never dispute that. The fact is that some things are more easy to build using a VFP solution, others with a SQL database solution.

Walter,