Thanks Ben,

That was the direction that we were heading.. first attempt a) is to scan thru the cursor performing a 1/0 record SELECT (index on WHERE criteria) to determine an UPDATE or INSERT, alternate methods (trying to get things to work first -- speed it up later) include b) possibly separating the UPDATES and INSERTS using .update for UPDATE and .updatebatch for INSERTS, c) using SQLPREPARE to speed up the UPDATE or INSERTS and d) using stored procedures to execute the SELECT, UPDATE and INSERTS.

This routine will be running daily with about 40 or so sets of VFP files, each set containing about 10-12 files.. each file having about 200 records.. We're also looking at possibly aggregrating the incoming sets of VFP files and processing the aggregate 10-12 files.. instead of processing the 40 sets separately..

Anybody else see any advantages/disadvantages to what we're looking at, anything that we may have missed (another possible solution)? We'd appreciate the advice/assistance.

Thanks again Ben!