From what little I know, an IconAuthor runtime is typically installed from the CD onto the workstation, just like a vfp runtime. The users are probably all 32-bit by now. I suspect that speed of graphic display will be much more critical than speed of record retrieval, and that a specialized product like IconAuthor will work better.

>Bret --
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>I did a disk-based catalog system using an old xBase compiler named QuickSilver many moons ago. It worked OK considering the technology of the time. I see plusses and minuses with using VFP. Plus: VFP6 has much richer graphics support than ever before and displaying cataloged pictures should not be an issue: Minus: VFP6 is a bit of an oinker in the amount of space it'd consume on your CD. It would take up, probably, 6MB+. Also, VFP requires a Win32 environment...can you guarantee that all of your recipients would be using Win95 or better?
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>>Another division of the company has used IconAuthor to make a photo database. Our department is considering doing something similar, possibly with different tools. We have the idea that IconAuthor, which works fine, is expensive and loaded with features we don't need (such as support for video clips). The idea is to create a system for retrieving and displaying digital photos, organized in a table of contents of different areas, to be distributed on CD. I wonder how such a system might be made in vfp, and how well it would compare with one made with IconAuthor or some other specialized software.