Hi Jos,

>Would the use of the NOUPDATE clause further speed up access to shared tables on a network server that do not require data to be written to them but only read from them?

depends on how broad your definition of "access" is.

One data point if defining "access" very loosely: Opening with noupdate speeded up the *closing* of relatively large lookup tables (4 tables all with cdx, 1 with fpt, together > 500 MB) in a sub-app markedly, while opening/reading was minimally faster. As in that particular environment tables were *always* opened and closed (no discussion wanted by the client) regularly, opening them noupdate whenever possible was quite helpful. Not every situation allows to flip those files as readonly like Walter suggests, as another process might need write access. IAC I'ld use the noupdate if possible.

I *think* measuring was done on vfp8, definitely XP Prof as client OS and no recollection on the server OS. As always, timing your use case/setup is reccomended.

HTH

thomas