>1. Of a retrieved resultset, display the results in a grid. In C#, use a suitable control (datagrid?) and in VFP use a VFP native grid. Assuming that it takes the same amount of time to get the resultset from the backend into C# and VFP respecitvely, record the time that is needed to fill the grid. Let's do this for 10 records and 100 records.
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>2. My favourate: From a retrieved dataset, get the upper boss of a random employee. In VFP you can use an index and a loop, In c# You've got to dig into the derived collection. Lets test this for 100 and 1000 records.
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>3. A very common one for reporting. Some integer value from the backend translates into a meaningfull character value or is a key to another local table. Munge the data so that it becomes one table again suitable for reporting (Note that in VFP you'd probably use a SQL SELECT Command to do this. Since C# is not capable of doing this locally, you'd probably end up doing relations in ADO.NET). Let's do this for 10, 100 and 1000 records.
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>4. From a retrieved dataset increase the value of any numeric column with 1 for any odd value. Lets do this for 10, 100 and 1000 records.
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>5. From a retrieve dataset containing a year, replace the value of any column with a any value for every leap year.
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>Of course, everyone is free to add some more.

I am amazed that nobody replied to this... amazingly, some people really take a week off :).

While on one side it can be argued that most of these requests are coming from a pro-Fox side, i.e. that they are just so easy to solve in Fox, I know they're actually coming from life itself. I've had worse - like a customer table where all the 'LLC', 'LTD' and such were in front of the actual name, and the name itself was surrounded by all possible variants of quotes (single, double, twice single, two commas before two singles after, dashes etc) and I needed to make that searchable - using FP1.0. Which was easy, using simple strtran(), stuff(), atc() and substr() with xBase command set.

So, I wouldn't discard this type of requests from benchmarking the programming/DML tool. Such things happen. I'd rather see the C#ers add what they had succesfully solved using their tool, and to see how it can be done in VFP. IOW, I'd like to see some symmetry, not to discard any of the sides.

Now if there was just one more thing: a way to measure the time comparable programmers in both camps spend to solve the problem, and then to measure the time to run the solution. That would be a much more fair comparison.