As I suspected/feared, that's what I ended up doing.

>I don't understand why you run updates on RV instead of VFP local cursor and than append to RV once
>
>>I have an app that uploads VFP data to SQL Server. Everything works but I'm seeing slow performance. A large part of the slowness is running VFP UPDATE commands against a remote view to a SQL Server database.
>>
>>A total of 72 tables get imported. Here are the specs for 1 of them, "Activity":
>>
>>- 55,000 rows, 44MB DBF file size
>>- One PK column and one FK column (both C(5))
>>- One GIS link column (C(30))
>>- Five date columns
>>- A bunch of other columns that don't need UPDATE processing
>>
>>Each SQL Server destination table is initially empty. The general import process for each table is:
>>
>>1. Create remote view into destination SQL Server table
>>2. APPEND from the source VFP table to the RV
>>3. Run various VFP UPDATE commands on the RV
>>4. TABLEUPDATE() the RV to commit all the changes
>>
>>The UPDATE commands that are being run against the RV are:
>>

>>* PK, FK, GISLink columns (call this "Update 1"):
>>UPDATE rv_Activity SET ;
>>  PKCol = "C" + ALLTRIM( PKCol ) ;
>>  , FKCol = "C" + ALLTRIM( FKCol ) ;
>>  , GLCol = ALLTRIM( GLCol )
>>
>>* Unlike VFP, SQL Server doesn't accept blank dates in datetime/datetime2 columns
>>* You have to have either a valid datetime, or NULL if the column is nullable
>>* We need to have blank dates represented as NULL
>>* In the initial APPEND step, SQL Server assigns blank dates a default value of {^1900-01-01 00:00:00.0000000}
>>* So, to change each "default" value to the (allowed) NULL value, I'm running this command for each date column:
>>UPDATE rv_Activity SET ;
>>  DateTimeColX = .NULL. WHERE TTOD( DateTimeColX ) = {^1900-01-01}
>>
>>* Call the 5 UPDATE commands above "Update 2"
>>

>>Here are the log results:
>>

>>[Mar-10 13:04:07] VFP Data Import: processing started for source table [ACTIVITY]
>>[Mar-10 13:04:07] VFP Data Import: created and opened Remote View into SQL table [dbo.ACTIVITY]
>>[Mar-10 13:04:08] VFP Data Import: APPENDed VFP data into remote view for SQL table [dbo.ACTIVITY]
>>[Mar-10 13:04:08] VFP Data Import: Data Update Step 1 started
>>[Mar-10 13:05:38] VFP Data Import: Data Update Step 1 completed successfully
>>[Mar-10 13:05:38] VFP Data Import: Data Update Step 2 started
>>[Mar-10 13:13:07] VFP Data Import: Data Update Step 2 ended successfully
>>[Mar-10 13:13:07] VFP Data Import: successfully updated remote view for SQL table [dbo.ACTIVITY]
>>[Mar-10 13:14:32] VFP Data Import: successfully TABLEUPDATE()ed remote view for SQL table [dbo.ACTIVITY]
>>[Mar-10 13:14:32] VFP Data Import: processing ended for source table [ACTIVITY]
>>

>>So:
>>
>>- the APPEND step takes 1 second
>>- the single UPDATE command in Update Step 1 takes 90 seconds
>>- the 5 UPDATE commands in Update Step 2 take 7min 29seconds (449 seconds, or just about exactly 5* 90 seconds)
>>- the TABLEUPDATE() step takes 85 seconds (not sure anything can be done about that)
>>
>>So, each VFP UPDATE command against the RV is taking about 90 seconds to process, for that particular table. That seems to be very slow.
>>
>>Other information:
>>- computer is a VM with 2 vcores and 8GB RAM. Both CPUs are pinned at 100% during the UPDATE commands
>>- the VM is running both the conversion process and the destination SQL Server 2012 Express instance
>>
>>- the RV has these properties explicitly set, all the others are the default:
>>=CURSORSETPROP( "SendUpdates", .T., "_SQLTemp" )
>>=CURSORSETPROP( "Buffering", 5, "_SQLTemp" )
>>
>>- SET MULTILOCKS is ON
>>
>>- SQL Server database recovery mode is SIMPLE (used to be FULL but log files grew to 19GB and I don't need the advantages of FULL for this)
>>
>>- No key fields/identities or any kind of constraints on the destination SQL Server tables. They're just empty tables waiting to be filled
>>
>>What I'm hoping for is that someone can suggest a CURSORSETPROP() setting or similar that I may have missed (or don't know about :)) If push comes to shove I'll create a temporary VFP cursor and do the UPDATEing in that prior to pushing it into SQL Server so I don't think creating SQL Server sprocs will be any easier.