Peer-to-peer doesn't necessarily mean that the file server will have a user working on it as far as I know. I always thought of peer-to-peer as having administrative files (ie. user/password files) on each workstation instead of having centralized administration (ie. domains(s)).

Anyways, I will let you know about my experience:

About 4.5 years ago, we went to a peer-to-peer network (NT Workstaion 4.0) with a multi-user VFP 3.0 application. I could count the occurances of data corruption on my left hand. At that time we had 4 regular users on the system. We have used the same setup until about 6 months ago (when we went to a dedicated file server running NT Workstation). We now generally have 10 users on the system. We haven't had a problem with data corruption. Of course, now we are running into the problem of too many users trying to use the system at once (NT Workstation has a 10-connection limit to a machine's shared resources).

So using my experience as guidance, I wouldn't hesitate using NT Workstation as a file server for VFP in a peer-to-peer network.

Now, I would suggest switching to NT Server (or 2000 Server) before you start to hit the 10 connection limit. It might not be a convenient time to implement a switch to Server when you do hit the limit (this is the boat I am in now...). It makes for unhappy users...

Joe

>Mark,
>
>>My major concern here is data corruption. I plan to battery backup
>>all of the peers and am willing to put NT (W2K?) on each if necessary.
>>Each client will run its own copy of the app, write its work files
>>locally ... The "server" peer will be a new one (PIII-500 or better)
>>and will only share the data files. What I'd like to avoid is
>>(at least initially) maintaining a dedicated server box for 2 clients.
>>I don't ever see this app expanding beyond 3-4 clients (this is
>>my wife's business and we don't want it to get any bigger than that).
>
>Analyze the COST over 3 years of a dedicated server (under $2000 for a good brand name with 5-user Server OS) vs. potential data corruption problems.
>
>Using the server as a workstation in a database system is suicidal, no matter the size of the business. I would *strongly* urge you not to go peer-to-peer. Maybe OK just for typical Office programs, but not for database systems.