Everything you suggested here sounds read good and similar to my thinking on this topic. I have begun to implement a prototype. I was told to use XML by others so I read up on it. My impression (at the infant level I am at) is that is just a structured way to pass data back and forth. I am not sure why I need this fancy method when I can just make up my own structure which seems to work just fine. Unless the XML format allows me to use tools which greatly simplify this process.

I was also considering FTPing the data file to the site and then using my application to activate a script file at the server side which looks for the file I FTPed and acts upon it.

By the way ... I am using ASPHTTP on the client side to access the server. I noticed that MABRY seems to have things like this to work with. Any experience with that ?



>I would do everything in batches.
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>Send your data sets back to the server in XML, then convert to cursor. Scan cursor recieved from client: (1) if no primary key, a new record was added. Add key then do an insert. (2) For deletes, use an extra field that indicates a deleted record. If field is flagged, delete from underlying table (3) If record has primary key and no delete flad, it's an update. Update underlying table. Put all this into a single SCAN ENDSCAN loop.
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>To reject updates while another person is editing, use a some sort of timestamp to see who got to record first.
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>Charlie