>thanks for all opinions. will entertain and let you know which way I decided to go.

I decided that I wanted to do something simple in VFP also, but all I wanted to do was simple SQLCONNECT()s and SQLEXEC()s on VFP tables. I discovered that I might try to do this if I could use a blank database (CREATE DATABASE mydb) and then add a connection (CREATE CONNECTION connectionname). However, the only way that I could connect to the VFP table through IP was that if the address was mapped to a driver letter (ie "I:\"). That destroyed my hopes and desires, so I decided not to research it further. Besides, if you create a connection, then you have to make sure that the user has the ODBC driver installed for VFP and then you have to step them through DNS setup. This wouldn't be too bad for strictly B2B practices, but most of the people that would be using my service would be home-workers.

I decided to build myself a server that operates on Linux and keeps a hash table with values that I could query through IP:Port from Microsoft Winsock Control. This also adds some serious security.