After some preliminary tests it seems that a Visual C++ program accessing an ACCESS database linked to a VFP table via ODBC can outperform a VFP program accessing the same VFP table directly.
The VFP table resides on a SCO Unix system and is shared on the network via Samba. I have turned on SQL Showplan: SYS(3054,1) and this shows that full Rushmore optimisation has been used in the VFP program. Curiously, the VFP program is only slower on the first attempt to access the table. Can anyone throw some light on this?

Rgds
Petras