>Mark,
>
>I read this Help and it leads to the following questions:
>
>1) Suppose I specify EditWork, SortWork and ProgWork for our main application. TMPFILES will be left default. Now, how can I determine, what are SortWork, etc. settings?

You can't except for TMPFILES -- sys(2023)

>2) Which directory ALTER TABLE uses for creating its internals?

sys(2023)

>3) How much space I need on this drive?

Take the current size of the table. You will need that much diskspace plus about 10 to 20% more. If the TMPFILES is also on that disk, you made need more than twice the current size of the table being altered. Personally, I would not perform the operation unless I had 3 or 4 times the space available as the size of the table AND at least 20% of the diskspace as unused.

>4) I prefer to leave TMPFILES as set by user, but adjust SortWork. Would it mean, what now each index command will use this directory? If it would be a NetWork drive, how it would affect the perfomance?

The busier the drive the worse the performance will be. Yes, if you define SORTWORK, then VFP will use that directory for the temp files for SORT and INDEX operations.

>You see, this is a problem, which doesn't have a simple answer, especially taking into consideration our environment.
>
> My manager wrote me a letter: Create temp directory on a Network drive for this application. You can see, how many complications this simple proposition is led to...