Eric,

There are different opinions on this, but I would say you're heading the wrong way. You could try to optimize all of your data access so that you're using indexes as much as possible. That may help. However, I don't think any non-server database will run well over a RAS line. There are several possible solutions. Here are a few:

1. Convert to client/server. You can use SQL Server or Oracle or even the new, free MSDE which is essentially SQL Server Lite. This can be a very expensive solution in terms of programming, hardware, and software. However, you'll get good speed over slow network connections and lots of other great stuff (replication, security, transaction processing, etc.). Whether it's worth it or not depends on how difficult it would be to re-tool your application and whether the other benefits of client/server would justify some of the cost.

2. Remote control software. pcAnywhere is the most popular product. I like this solution if only a small number of people (say 1-5) will have to be connected at once. You'll need one PC with your application and pcAnywhere at the home office for each simultaneous connection. This can be a nightmare if you need a lot of connections, but it's pretty easy if you only need a few.

3. Terminal Server or WinFrame. Windows Terminal Server is a Microsoft product, WinFrame is an add-on from Citrix (from whom MS licensed the terminal server technology, got it?). This is not that different from using pcAnywhere except that you have one really big server that multiple people can connect to. Your application runs on the server so that data doesn't have to go back and forth over the wire. This can be expensive because you'll need a server with lots of processing power and RAM if you have a lot of users. However, I think it's a lot more efficient and a lot easier to administer than a bunch of machines running pcAnywhere.


>We are in the process of creating a web interface to our VFP application, but in the meantime we are exploring the possibility of using NT RAS to connect our remote offices. Using this temporary solution, however, takes between an hour and an hour and a half to save a single record and between five to ten minutes to return the results of a basic query. Has anyone delved into this area, is there a way to streamline the operations, or am i heading the wrong way? Any advice would be appreciated.
> Thanks.
>
> -EB