>>Any data format that has an ODBC driver can become an ODBC server. This includes VFP, SQL Server, Access any DBMS worth its salt, and even other backends like Excel. ODBC is a mechanism that provides a common interface for all of these 'backends'. If you create an ODBC Data source from your database (or whatever) you can then access that data source from any application that is capable of opening ODBC datasources.
>>So I have a database that was built in MS Access. I go to Start-> Settings -> Control Panel -> ODBC, and click add. I select MS Access Driver, and then give my data source a name, and locate the .mdb file. Done. I can now open VFP, open my VFP database, right click in the designer and choose connections. I click on Add, and select my new datasource from the list. I now have a connection to an Access database from VFP. With this, I can create remote views to access that data. This is the 2 minute client server tutorial. Any questions?
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>Eric,
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>Trying to clearly understand how to do this...
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>With your ODBC example above, if the Access data is on one server PC and a VFP application is on a client PC, then it seems that these need to exist:
>- ODBC driver on server

There's no need for an ODBC driver on the server - unlike SQL Server, there's is no separate server application per se; Access .MDB files are read and written via standard file I/O, with the ODBC driver on the client side performing all the work of translating the SQL query into file oiperations against the Access file. If this were a query against a client/server database, the ODBC driver would instead forward the SQL query to the server, and would present the result set back on the client in a standardized format.

IOW, the 'server' here is providing file level access to the .MDB, and the ODBC driver translates queries to I/O operations.

>- VFP database on client
>- VFP Remote view defined on client
>- VFP application on client
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>Is that right?
>Are more components needed?
>How does the client SEE the server datasource?
>Could we use native VFP as the database on the server?
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>We're trying to minimise data transfer between the server and client.