Paul

>2. i mentioned earlier that i am doing this testing directly from the server. well, when i display status from the vfp8.0 version, it is accessing the tables from the c:\drive. When I am doing the program from the app, it is using the UNC name, which is \\hppav\tasks\t_memo, etc. this to me sounds like it could be a problem - perhaps it has to drill down through a number of areas to get to \\hppav\tasks before it reaches each table. just a thought. if so, i'm not sure how to enforce the use of c:\tasks in the application (for testing purposes). any help would be appreciated.

>hopefully there's a clue in the above. if so, please let me know. if i should post my status file for comparison (if anyone wants the fun of looking at it to see if they spot something that i didn't), let me know. Thanks again everyone for all your help.
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>mike, thanks for your response (and your offer for help - very generous). right now i can't do that as access is a problem for outsiders. i do very much appreciate your offer though.
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>EDIT - I have checked this on another computer in our office and while that computer is not as recent as the server (ie its specs are not as good), it runs the query in 1/3 the time as the server. i checked the status of the other computer and it was using the UNC naming. therefore i don't think this is the problem.
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You must contrast apples with apples. Remove all local copies of the files. Never compare them with server files. The server is busy meeting requests for file access from everybody and with all the network packets it is generally slower than a local hard drive.

By the way, don't hardcode paths. Put them in a .H or ini file or something. That way you can work on your local machine disconnected from the server just by switching out that file. Test and debug your code with the local files to see if everything is functional. Switch that file to the server version and do performance tests.