>Same concern was in play and this use of a handle in the connectstring clause has solved most of it. There may be other problems with counting connections to a SQL server, specially when it doesn't dismiss a dropped connection - in case it may be reestablished, and when the app establishes a new one instead, for a while it counts as two.

OK, here's another question: The Help file on SQLStringConnect isn't really clear to me. It says the default for the first parameter, lShared, is false, meaning a connection created with SQLStringConnect() would not be shared by default. But when you use the alternate cConnectString as the first parameter, it's less clear what the default for the second parameter, lSharable. Do you need to explicitly use SQLStringConnect(cConnectString,.t.) to have a shared connection? I think my confulsion comes from the use of 'shared connection' in one place and 'shared data source' in another.