>>If you're using a middle tier as well as a backend, there are advantages in having only one box and OS vs. having two of each (presumably you could host your middle tier on the same box as the backend if it was Win2K/NT).
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>I can also see advantages to separating them. No contention for shared resources and it's very unlikely that one process can bomb the other. With some type of Giga channel between the two boxes I don't think you would lose much time because of data transfer.

Hmmm... you're effectively using a C/S interface between your two boxes, why would you need that much bandwidth? Gigabit Ethernet is still pretty expensive.

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>>Importing existing data is usually the ugliest step in a scenario like this.
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>Yeah, I spent months cleaning the data for the resort I've been working for. VFP is a great language for doing this type of work, though.

Absolutely true. I've done this sort of thing intermittently for years, and I've never used another product even partially as good. The combination of data-centric language, record-level manipulations coupled with on-the-fly creation of temporary tables and cursors is immensely strong for this type of work.

Brutal speed with large record sets never hurts, either. :-)
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>Peter