>Thanks Mark - yes, re-setting the FetchSize property to -1 as you suggest, does seem to prevent the timing out. However it still leaves my main issue:
>
>> HERE is the problem: TABLEUPDATE(1,.T.) returns .T. indicating that
>> "changes to all records are committed". However, upon checking the
>> table in SQL Query Analyzer, some or all of the data has NOT been committed!!!
>>

Tableupdate with the first parameter as 1 only updates 1 row. This is per the manual.

>Even more! I can tweak CursorSetProp('BatchUpdateCount', 100, 'VIEW'), which is supposed to "greatly increase update performance" according to Help.
>
>In fact, adjusting this value now causes TableUpdate() to update ONE row at a time!! Instead of ALL rows, as the RV is set for Table Buffering.

The default behavior of tableupdate is to update the current record. If you want to do a forced update of all records, do TABLEUPDATE(.T.,.T.) which should at least attempt to update all the records.