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>Ok, there are a couple of things that play into this. Number 1 usually is that Fox developers tend to look at things with/from other Fox developers. So everyone in the room will approach the problem with the same fox centric approach many times. Often times while that approach may work, it's not how the rest of the world does data access. Look at Java. Look at VB6. Look at anything else - heck even Paradox and Access use objects to access data.
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>Or put another way - if xBase was really so unique and so much more productive it wouldn't have died. xBase was very popular in the early 90's still when Microsoft bought it. You can't blame Microsoft for this either because Borland killed Dbase way before Microsoft started neglecting VFP marketing.

Can I suggest another reason why DBF died? Because there's no money to make with it. I mean I buy VFP and that's it. MS makes no money after that. I do as many apps as I please and MS receives nothing from that.

So the solution to this economic mess. Trash the DBF model as fast and as often as possible and push client-server processing. The result. MS sells client-server licenses. Oh yeah I almost forgot. MSDE is free. Is it really?

Like you said earlier there's no free lunch. Let's just say that there are needs closely coupled with client-server use that you won't have with DBF development. Client-server adds security but it does'nt work on its own. You have to take care of it (DBA) and other nice things resulting on a much more expensive solution that could be needed in many cases. Solution that could be developed with a DBF approach.