>We have implemented a system that runs with a VFP client on either SQL Server or Oracle8. The SQL Server performance isn't great, but it is MUCH better than the Oracle performance. Has anyone else experience this same thing, or do we just need to work on tuning the Oracle database?

You either have a tuning problem, an index [or lack of] problem or a faulty [less than optimized] SQL command. Properly indexed Oracle tables provide query results very efficiently. I query million record tables over a WAN [I'm in Dallas and one of our Oracle servers is in North Carolina] and I get results in 1 or 2 seconds. This of course depends on the complexity of the SQL and how many records you are getting back.