To add to what Ed said, you can prevent users from opening tables except from your apps. You need VFP 7 and enable DBC Events. You only allow the opening of tables or views in the BeforeOpenTable event if a variable like goApp exists. You create the existence of the global application object when your app is launched. If this object does not exist, return .f. and the table is not opened. The only thing you can not prevent is users deleting the files.

>In a multi-user (medical) application, I would like to put shared-data on a server, in a folder not accessible by clients using Windows-explorer. In this way it becomes impossible to damage, destroy, ..., the data, by the users themself.
>Of course the VFP program installed in the clients must access the data, to change them.
>
>I tried to put the 3DatabaseFiles in a shared folder (folder "DatabaseOnly" mapped as L: in the network), then "hide" the tables on a same-level-server-folder named "Tables", not shared, but with full permissions. In the project I made the references Database-Tables, so that its possible, at project-level, to open the database and then the related tables.
>
>Unfortunatedly, from the client I CAN open the database (OPEN DATABASE L:data1 SHARED), but when I try to open one of its related tables (USE TableA IN 0 SHARED), the result is "File TableA does not exist".
>
>Is there a solution to this problem, or an alternative way to get data "safe" from users on the network, other then using a COM object?
>TIA
>Bruno Maddalozzo