Bob,
>Is it feasible to have a centralised data store of VFP data at, for example, location A with remote Locations B,C,D etc accessing the data at Location A without the need to load the exe file over the network and transferring whole tables over the network? I've asked this before on UT and got pretty negative replies in the past.
>

It isn't feasible (IMO) to have this type of situation. Processing with VFP data is all done at the client. As such, all data accessed (e.g. queries) must be in memory on the local machine in order for the VFP data engine to access it. The application would download most, if not all, of the records in your centralized tables into memory (cache) and process them. Depending on the size of your data, your application could take minutes (or longer) to process a simple query.

>The critical thing here is speed, of course. If I could have an app such as above, what would be the minimum data transmission speed for VFP at the remote Locations to access data at Location A and to display/update records. Larry Miller in his thread mentioned 256K or better.....what do you think?
>

The 256K line I recommended was using a VFP front end accessing a SQL Server back end. It was by no means a recommendation for the speed required VFP data. To make your application run with reasonable speed, you would need at least T1 (1 MB throughput) or better. Even with this, the application would seem slow because this is still 1/10 the speed of a slow local area network (LAN). And the added distance between sites would make it seem even slower.

One other suggestion, if you wanted to use VFP data, would be to use Rick Strahl's wwIPStuff utitlies. One of the functions gives you the ability to send files over the wire via the HTTP protocol. You would have a "server" process running on the centralized network. The remote EXEs would request a data environment from it. It would then zip up all necessary files (DBC/DCT, DBF/CDX, etc.) and send the zip file over the network. The client machine would unzip the files into a "local" directory and the application could use VFP data locally. At appropriate times (e.g. user requests to submit changes), the client application could zip up all the necesary files and send them back to the server. The server would take the files and process the changes.

It would take some rework on your part to get this going but it may be something to think about.

Also, take a look at implementing a loader program. With this, you can have a shell program locally installed at each site. The shell program checks the version stored on the central server and if the version is greater than the local one, it copies it down and then executes it. Otherwise, it simply executes the local copy. With this technique, you don't have the added penalty of downloading the EXE into memory from the remote server. The delay of initial load won't be noticable to your users.

HTH.