Hi Tamar!

We have also a vertical market Application, and we always looking for speed... (We've had an FW2.6 Version bud we have totally rewritten the VFP 9 Version years ago, no speed comparison done...)
Here some of our "standard" Performance hints
- dbf over Network with more than 1 user is a totally killer, even in Terminalserver cases. Nowadays with SMB3 aso... We can switch out APP between SQL or DBF Backend, so in multiple User env. nearly 100% of our Users use the SQL Version. This is much faster than DBF, and if there is more Database Speed needed you can tune the SQL Sever. on single Place env. we use dbf. Bud also sometime SQL or SQL Express because auf the 2GB Limit.
- DBF Version: select * is much faster than select Fieldlist (VFP uses than "use again alias...")
- SQL Version: select * is much slower than select Fieldlist
- DBF Version: locate command may be a crap, event if you think it is Rushmore optimized, if you can use seek, do it! We have nearly killed the locates
- SQL Version: we have an Hybrid. The data it self are on the SQL Server. Bud we cache much Data (lookup Tables, Combobox values, Settings Table...) in local indexed cursors, which are created at the starting point of our app.
- Starting the EXE from Network also kills Performance. We start the EXE locally, and access only needed Resources via Network.
- General Object Creating Performance according: http://mattslay.com/foxpro-newobject-fast-here-slow-there/ 

HTH