>But if you use DBFs, you as a developer can't guarantee data reliability, beyond providing the best of you to avoid as much problems as you can. Anyway, that's why I heartily encourage anyone to use at least MSDE or Firebird for small projects.

If you use VFP as it's own you can't quarantee. But with some carefully programming (or if you are lazy with 3rd party tools) auditing, remote data processing and validation or even data repairing rise the reliability to the "quarantee level". Things that are built in to some more reliable engines but there are also a some additional cost to use those like SQL server instead of DBC/DBF + above mentioning proofing things.

AT