I'm trying to define the best aproach on a LAN based aplication...
Before to begin to develop application read soìå books about DISTRIBUTED APPLICATIONS
My question is:
should a I open my tables and never close then (to speed up data operations) or in the other end, should I open tables just when I need them, since as I understand, Foxpro tables are fragile and could get damaged in a LAN failure.
If you use first suggestion - my experience show that you will become crazy. Your customers will ring you every time when they have problem with server, LAN, electricity and so on.
I have never afforded to use more than 30(from 500 in whole apps) open simultaneously DBFs. Even I force my programmers in small apps to close tables when they finish to use them. When any one of user in distributed application saves data I lock the table during SAVEDATA. There are lot of things written in books, which will be useful for you. You can use different type of buffering and so on...

I know I should use SQL Server as the best way of doing this, but I'm no expert and dont have that much time to get the proper training and do a SQL Server application.

(any sugestions, samples and so on would be great)