We are doing the following: Downloading about 1000 records from a 100,000 record table in SQL Server 7.0 database. Performance on the client end is important but not not critical. Minimizing the load on the server is critical. We are performing the query based on contents of one flag in the SQL table for which we can use either a bit or a tiny int field.

Once the data is downloaded we will do intensive processing on the data , including the normalizing the downloaded flat file data into five or six tables, and and purging all the duplications and garbage records resulting from the flat file structure. We will then upload the results to a normalize SQL database on a different server. For this upload peformance is important.

We will also update the flag for the thousand records in ths source database. Here again peformance is not merely important, but critical.

Since we don't need all the ADO features in this case, it seems that simple SPT is likely to give us the best performance for both uploads and downloads on the performance critical server. Is there any reason to think something else (such as ADO) would give better performance?

Given the criticality of performance, is this a case where we might be better off using VB or some client other than VFP? We do have some developers with VB experience, so we can draft one of them onto the project if this is a better choice.

I'm assuming we should not even consider remote views, since remote view are just SPT with a wrapper, and logically leaving the wrapper off will speed performance. Again is there anything wrong with this assumption?


Thanks in advance for your help

Gar