Jonathan Fletcher wrote:

"When you have to restart one of your several servers every few days because
it just wants to take the afternoon off you get an attitude. (I have a
client that has a boatload of SQL and FMP and the SQL guys just shake their
heads and chuckle.)"

I just have to say my experience is the opposite; we have a solution that
began life in '93 or earlier, upgraded over the years, and is now a barely
converted 60 file mess on FMSA 11. I had a ghost user last week that I
couldn't dislodge, and she had a record locked, so I ended up restarting the
server. (they should fix that btw). That was the first time in months that I
have so much as logged into the thing, much less fiddled with it. It really
couldn't be any more stable and turn-key than it is.

We (they, not me personally) also run a few MS SQL servers that require
(what seems to me) to be constant fiddling, log file shrinkage (I have no
idea...); in any case, trouble-free they are not.
And yeah, 30 minutes dev time on filemaker = close to a day in SQL land.
There is more database work to do it seems, especially in that there always
seems to be complicated stored procedures that need to be debugged. And then
of course that needs to be laid out for the user. 

All anecdotal from an ignorant perspective, I admit.

Also, yes, in the age of very wide landscape monitors, toolbars are better
on the sides than on the top. ;)

Geoff