Rick,
First, I hope I didn't offend by making assumptions.
>> I see that I might be able to get around this using FireDAC, since it has an ADS option...
I've not looked into FireDAC much (that may change soon), but wouldn't any support for ADS in FireDAC carry the same dependency on current version support from SAP? I really don't know.
As for what I might consider switching to, it would be a huge problem. The main reason I selected ADS so many years ago was its continued support of the Visual FoxPro file format. I have clung desperately to that format because of the totally awesome combination that Delphi, ADS, and VFP make in every single one of my development efforts. The value in the ability to utilize VFP to manipulate vast amounts of data via an interpreted command-line interface (that I've know since the days of dBase), is incalculable. Maybe you can imagine my glee when I realize that a data field (or a few) in a ADS table needs to be tweaked just a little to provide a better result in my Delphi application. In under five minutes, I can simply open the table in VFP, enter (many times) a single command, and voila, I've modified the field(s) in the entire table exactly as desired, and then can immediately run my Delphi application against that new dataset. I may be living in the past, but I can't think of any other two DBMS products that are able to work together to provide that kind of productivity. I would have loved to convert tables and databases to take full advantage (excuse the pun) of the proprietary ADS file format, but I can't possibly count the number of times that VFP has totally saved me in a data crisis moment. The Advantage Data Architect is a great tool, but when using the VFP file format, it can't accomplish a fraction of the work in even a ten-fold increase in time. Maybe SQL et.al. is the answer but I need someone to explain it to me. I admit freely to being an "old dog" in that regard. Oh, and did I mention that the now ancient VFP still works great, even on Windows 10? Who-da thunk?
The fact is, if the dBase 10 Plus product had even a tenth of the UI building capabilities of Delphi or Visual Studio, that would be my goto database application dev tool. If, if, if, .......
Sorry, didn't mean to lament the "good ol' days" to such a degree. Maybe it's time to retire; but I really love the work. What's an ol' dog to do?