As Sergey corrrectly pointed out, it's mainly a compatibility enhancement. Aleksey has done tons of other changes to sync up our SQL engine with SQL Server and standards.

>>>It's amazing that we can have a varchar field type in a free table DBF. It almost seems imposible. Are there any restrictions on what we can do with a DBF (free table) containing varchar fields? Do those fields create additional files, like the FTP supporting memo fields?
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>>They are not variable but fixed lenght fields where value is paded with binary zeros to the lenght of the field. The main goal of variable lenght fields is compability with SQL Server and other backends.
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>Thank you - that being said - it's still seems the biggest change to the DBF since it broke the 32 fields/table barrier. VFP is going mainstream - it seems:-)