one sneaky way is a second network adapter in the server!

the delay to post a report to my request table is about one second , less than launching dcom !! PLUS my slave machine can keep most of its data local with the tables open , and it just checks for requests once a second. theoretically, it could use COM objects to launch multiple requests, and could print the users reports on their own printers!

As a rule, I don't let users modify master files, they just post to a change file & the slave posts it a second later!

mike