>>2. Building a single "UPDATE" statement and using macro expansion did NOT, indeed it made things worse.
>
>Did not expect that to be honest

without seeing code guessing that it this stems from "replace" working on currently loaded buffers vs. update having to identify record first in the set

>Do you mean you create the array once per instantiated object and reuse it rather than using amembers() for each save ?
>Since you have to access all the elements of the array, for each is faster

>>I have not yet gone over to separate cloned objects and using CompObj() but I am looking into it.

What is the reason to check each field via rel. slow vfp code ? if compobj shows difference, gather from name walks the object fields in C, should be faster. Having special data objects with no other properties probably speeds this process up a tiny bit.
If this is an attempt to minimize conflict frequency, using other approaches is preferable IMHO.