John,

The most notable drawback in Mark's approach is that it is Fox-Specific. This may or may not be an issue. If given the choice between two options - and one may be require a little extra effort - but it is platform neutral, I will go with that option.

I guess you mean "development language"-neutral rather than database neutral. If you thought database neutrality was important you'd be more of a fan of Remove Views ;-)

The value of the example comes from the Oracle SQL, not the Fox code. The clarity from the TEXTMERGE facility is fantastic for VFP people and has value for that purpose, not as an essential part of the example.

IMHO the Fox example could be read by a Java, ASP.NET or VB.NET developer and replicated with ease, minus the TEXTMERGE bit. That would be true of most cases where SQL is built for SPT IMHO.

You are fortunate that your recent development work allowed you to focus exclusively on Oracle. Others have customers with existing investment in SQL Server, Oracle of various vintages, Sybase, Cache... we cannot afford to rely on Oracle-specific processes to service all these customers. I guess that is the price of database-neutrality which is surely as relevant as language-neutrality.

Regards

j.R