>Hi Al, William, Sergey, John and Fabio
>
>Thanks all for the responses. I am using FireBird as the back end, so yes and the data is for reporting purposes. The reason I had asked this question was because I was not sure if CPU load distributed to the client machine will offset the Network load cost, involving medium-end(?) machines.
>
>But as this was unanimous that I was better of SUM()ming on the server, thus reducing the Network load with a bit more CPU load on the server, that is the way I will be going.
>

and if you want more performance, update 1 machine only: the server!

>Thanks and regards
>
>>The server has to read all records involved into SUM() anyway. Summing on the server will require only some additional CPU time but saves network traffic.
>>
>>>
>>>The users that I have to cater to do not have specialized servers, but rather have medium power computers acting as servers. In such a situation is it advisable to get the data from the back-end and then SUM()? Or is it still advisable to let the server machine do the SUM()ming?