>Is it possible to run several processes in VFP 5.0 without allowing them to "freeze" each other. For example, I made a simple modeless form with timer, showing current system time. Started 10 copies of a form. All of them were running OK. But when I tried to issue SELECT * command in background, all timers stopped until SELECT wasn't finished.
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VFP is a single-threaded product; only one thread of execution is active at a given time. It also responds to events between execution of p-code instructions; you may note that a whole bunch of timer events were waiting when the SELECT instruction finished - all the events occured, and were recorded, but VFP's event loop was not process until the SELECT statement completed.

The same would be true of other windows events - you could typeahead in a text box, or click buttons, or whatever, and until the SELECT statement completed, VFP would record the event but not act on it.