Thanks for your reply. Those resources will be very helpful.
I guess XML data service would work better for what I need than a web service.

I have a couple of questions/ideas I need to run by, though.

1. I forgot to mention that the data needs to be accessed in a secure manner since it will contain sensitive information not for prying eyes. Can an XML data service provide an acceptable level of security (I'll transfer over SSL, and I figure I will probably have to provide the mechanism for some kind protected data access)?

2. Also, it is more important that the smart client user has contuous/fast access than the web user (occasional user). What if I keep the main copy of the data on the client's server, and using datetime stamps to keep track of changes? I then figure I could run a separate app in background that will check for changes, update data on web server, and retrieve changes from web server that also contain datatime stamp updated records. So basically have two copies, but the one on the secure web server won't retain certain sensitive information. If need be the data on web server can be batch updated if data becomes corrupted.

Their connection speed will determine how often it will update data (or maybe I can call the data service asyncronously, if possible with vfp)

Finally we host all our clients' web sites on a secure server, if it goes down, we'll that isn't that much of a catastrophy. However, if the smart-clients also accessed that data, we'll really be in trouble. And setting up a separate server for each one just wouldn't work for us (right now).

Can this be a workable solution or just a hokey idea? Thanks very much for your time.

Marcel