>What are the options? Would it be best to put the data within another DLL and call this if needed?

Do you mean you want to hardcode data into the dll? I don't understand what you mean by "put the data within another DLL".

>What are the speed issues? What?What?What?

Is this a WWW project? :))

>The initial data will be fairly small (c150k straight data) but another project I will be working on will involve over 1Mb. Main function is to lookup a short text item and return a corresponding equivalent sized item (if found).

Well, 1M is not so much. Is this in VC++? It should be fast whatever you do. But fast enough? It depends on what you need this lookup for.

Vlad