>>>Can you tell me a little more about your views? - I only have one VIEW.
>>>
>>>Does a single view gather info from all five tables? no - view gathers information from one table.
>>>
>>>On average what is the size (in records) of a view and what is the record length in bytes? it is small, about 1000 records, but growing...the record
>>length in bytes is about 615.
>
>So you are looking at 615 K every time you build a view. I don't see this as a problem on a 10baseT network which is capable of servicing at least 1 MB a second. If there are a lot of users on your network, this could be a serious problem.
>
>If your view is parametrized with complex parameters it is quite possible to experience a slow-down in query speed. From what you have described so far, I believe this is your problem.
>
>I generally try to keep my record length between 60 and 150 bytes. Of course this means that I have many related tables ( not related by persistant relationships), and am forced to use compressed character surrogate and primary keys. My surrogate keys are based on a base 249 character system and are at most 4 characters long. This keeps my parametrized views simple. If I have to fetch 1000 records, we are looking at 150K at most.
>
>>>
>>>Are the tables related via surrogate keys that are integer or compressed character based? only one main table used, but I have tables for my combo box
>
>Remember that VFP3 has a problem with it's comboboxes in that if you go past 60 items, things really start to slow down. I hope you are using VFP5. The comboboxes are much much faster.
>>values.... thanks rob

Hi Asif...thanks for your answer..
What are compressed character surrogate keys? what are tables related via surrogate key? I am new at writing programs for networks. I need to know how
to use data from a network drive in a way that gets the best performance.
Can you suggest ways I can learn? I thought VIEWS would be fast, since they
work in memory. thanks --rob