Tom,

You understand me correctly - I am looking at ways of realizing the 3-tiered "dream".
I (think) I have a good grasp of the basic *concepts*, but it is in VFP's implementation potential and in the capabilities/limitations of OLE that my questions lie.

I think it would be innovative and extremely useful if the next version of VFP supported some mechanism to permit VFP-to-VFP of views and SQL and general record-set capabilities with the full power of 'local' VFP.

Thanks,
Jim N.
.>>I have been digging into the OLE and OLE Server stuff. Seems to have lots of potential!
>>
>>One thing that struck me is that one *probably* has to use ODBC to pass table record sets between processes, EVEN FOR VFP-TO-VFP. Am I missing something here - that is, are there ways for one VFP (client) to 'request' a set of records from another VFP process (server) on another machine USING STRAIGHT VFP COMMANDS???
>>
>>The other thing that I wonder, regardless of the answer to the above, is would performance/response be tolerable if there were say 250-350 client machines all processing with a single VFP Server. Also, in this situation, I *ASSUME* that OLE and other functionality "takes care' of keeping track of sender/recipient and that VFP Server need not concern itself with those duties. Would that be a correct assumption?
>>
>>Thanks for your time,
>>Jim N.
>
>If I understand you right, look into the '3 Tier' database design principles. You will find white papers & more on MS sites and other places. It is basically an open back end (data) with an open front end (GUI) with a 'business rule' middle layer to handle the throughput.
>
>HTH,
>Tom