Hi Chris

> 1. Make sure your queries are Rushmore optimized. See the SYS(3054) function

This is ok.

> 2. There was an article in FoxPro Advisor back in 1999 (I think) that detailed how VFP brings a lot of the index across the network. The article points out how to alleviate this, including removing the DELETED() index.

I'll look that up. My fiancé has a subscription

> 3. DCOM. A VFP DCOM server can sit on the same machine as the VFP data. When called be a client program (VFP in your case), the DCOM server is on the same machine as the VFP data, so processing is not slowed down by transferring the data across the network

I'd like to know more about this as well. I had thought about COM but had no idea where to start.

Thanks for your insights
Mike