thanks for your response. i've tried what you indicated and using mysql was able to open even the mysql user table in notepad. although there was a bunch of garbage, the usernames and encrypted passwords were there. that concerns me. i've posted in the mysql forums to see what is the problem, but no word yet. i imagine that mysql depends on limiting os access as well as limiting access to the databases. if you can see the tables, at the very least you can delete them (which of course is not good).

i'm still new to this so i've been doing some reading. hopefully i find something out about this. thanks for your detailed response to my question about ODBC. I've tried ODBC w/o password being put in the DSN, but within foxpro all i get is the dsn prompt asking for it but when it is filled in properly nothing happens. i'm not asking for advice on this right now (since you're a sql server guy), but am new to everything so am still trying to figure a bunch of things out.

thanks.

paul