Eric,

>The thing is that even if your query ("SELECT * FROM empfile WHERE empno = '" & sEmpNo & "'") returns only one record, the whole table will go through the network and then the Where clause will execute locally because dBase files don't have remote database engine. The server is only there to share the file.

It is not an entirely DBF fault. History tells, VB is not a data-centric tool so it boils down to questioning its capability in handling data. VFP on other hand, uses SQL statement too (same with what was said by Elinore) with Remote Views and SQL Pass Through, but the performance is much, much, much faster. That is why, MS is promoting VFP in building data intensive COM components and not VB. I've been doing personal conversion of some our data intensive modules from VFP to VB, but it really disappoints me with the performance. Yakkkss...

>The best you can have is to upgarde to MSDE, SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, ... or any other real database engine (FYI, Access is not a real database engine!).