Kevin,

>I'm not trying to rain on VFP9's parade...the SQL enhancements will be welcomed with open arms. But I'd go so far as to say it's 'off strategy' for MS to add things to the report writer. They did so little to it for so long, while Crystal became a great alternative.

There are some interesting things going on right now in the reporting arena at Microsoft, with the new SQL Server Reporting thingie on the one hand and also VFP's reporting changes (many of which are not yet announced). With those and also Crystal, plus all the various third-party components and tools like Mind's Eye, XFRX, eReports, and on and on... it looks to me like there's gonna be lots to write about this year and many more options for presenting data in various ways.

>Many who needed advanced reporting/graphing functionality have moved on to Crystal, which has pretty good integration with VFP. I think it's reasonable to expect that the reporting enhancements in VFP9 will still leave the report writer a subset of what CRW can do.

I can't say just how the two products will line up point by point, but I think VFP developers are likely to be very pleased with the changes coming in VFP9.