>Javier,
>>Thomas, when I talk about not improving the VFP data engine I mean from a Microsoft perspective. If they don't improve the data engine they force you to juump to MS SQL at some point, thus selling SQL licences (where the real money is).
>
>Free/Open Databases have surpassed VFP's storage handling capacities -
>(not the whole package) and they threaten SQL server growth more than VFP.
>People "forced" out are not guaranteed entries into SQL server.
>

I know you can use whatever SQL backend, but Microsoft can manage itself to make VFP "work" better with MS SQL than with other SQL engines. They have always managed to do so in other areas so it will not be a difficult task as both products are from MS.

As Alex Wieder says, they could even drop the local engine and embedd MS SQL into VFP almost natively (USE sqlTable, ...). It's a bit extreme, as a local engine is very helpful for calculations and data mungling, but who knows ... Besides, if MS plans to make it's operating systems more data centric, MS SQL is going to be everywhere, as a standalone license or embedded into the operating system; it's prices could drop sharply so that almost every Windows corporate user had a license of it, and at this point you would not even mind that VFP didn't have a strong local data engine.

It's easy to let our minds blow away...