Al,

>PMFJI, but do you know if there are any recommendations on NT file system settings such as Opportunistic File Locking etc. when used with VFP?

Well, i've experimented with feature (i think it was called Exclusive oplocks). The default setting of NT is that it uses exclusive oplocks, which means that if a client opens a table for shared acces, and nobody else is using the table the NT server opens it exclusive for the client.

The client also loads a read/write buffer. So each change in the table is directly written to the local buffer instead of directly to the server (no record locks are reqiured by the OS). The advantage in performance is huge (when changing data) . The mutations in the buffer are written to the server shortly after that.

When a second client tries to open the same table, NT has some communication with the first client and orders it to write all his unflushed changes. From that point each client has to use recordlocks and direct communication with the server to change data and the performance drops.

I think NT uses this strategy by default (I might be wrong). I've never experienced any problems with this setting. If you disable this feature you will lose that performance advantage when a certain table is only used by one client.

Walter,