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>ADO is the MS solution for this. If you choose ADO, you can use the VFPCOM utility to handle the conversions.

I see MS more and more touting XML, even over ADO in some cases.

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>For ultimate speed, I would look into wwIPStuff and EncodeDBF and DecodeDBF. these routines convert a cursor into a tight text string, and then rebuild the cursor.

I didn't know about these functions. I'll jump over to Rick's site and look at them. I can use them in the system I'm currently designing.

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>If the COM object will have varied clients in the future, I would use either ADO or XML.