Thanks to all for your input and advice.

I just wanted to point out that we are using VFP as a middle tier in an information delivery system. The problem lies in the fact that every hour or so (say) we'll need to do a REQUERY(), because not only we have no control over which records have been updated, the number of records will increase with each call to the source database. Also, preliminary testing has shown that REFRESH() grinds things to virtually to a halt. Its much, much faster doing a REQUERY(), may be because it checks each record for changes at the server before transmitting the changes.

We could go by what Bob suggested about using timestamps, (great idea, will look into it), but it will involve some serious coding at our end here.

Whatever the outcome, I'll keep you posted if you're interested.

Many thanks again

Sanjay