>Use mytable
>
>How much network traffic does that generate? If then you create a cursor from the table for use in the forms, is the whole table sent across the network and then the sql executed locally, or does the server execute the sql and just send back the cursor. (talking just in VFP not with MS SQL server).

I don't claim to be a LAN expert, but my impression is that a good portion (if not all) of the file would be sent. That is a good question, I never checked if you could limit the number of rows returned by a local view and do the batch thing.... I'll look into that. It is my impression that it holds the file open somewhere for the user, either in client or server memory (I'm sure I'll be corrected here at least a little bit (s)).

>Second question. I have a grid which displays data from a large table, 10,000 records and thus 10,000 rows. Movement is fast because I use a text box to enter seeks (like the jkey browse). Would changing this to an SQL remote view decrease the amount of network traffic? It strikes me as that data still needs to get sent to the local machine.

In this case, the data would still need to be sent from the server at some point. An optimized C/S application would limit the number returned at any one time (i.e. say, 100 records at a time) when you reach that limit, the next batch is fetched. You should be able to do this via local views as well, but like I said, I want to double check that.

>My apps will typically have 10-50 users accessing single records from some tables but also acessing whole tables as well. Since MS SQL is not cheap, especially if you have to install it at each server, I am trying to get an idea on how cost effective for the end user making this switch will be.

There are many many other benifits of going C/S that I discussed in my article besides performance. I think I said somewhere in the article that performance may not always improve, but it will rarely be slower (under "normal" (s) server conditions, of course).

>Right now the slowest part of the app is loading complex forms into memory which I understand VFP 5.0 will improve.

Unfortunately, that is a problem for my VFP 3.0 C/S apps as well, especially on the 486's.... I just installed 5.0, so as soon as I can catch my breath aroubd the office, I want to re-compile the app and see how much better is "better".

HTH,
Scot.