Hi Gene,

If you have a static IP address that is part of a network connected to the internet/WAN you could try to use the default directory or an absoulte path to the table you wanted to access. If you had a table named mytable and the local path to it were c:\data\mytable and the static IP was 64.26.49.44, you could try the following to access it from a remote computer using the VFP command window:

**default directory method

set default to \\64.26.49.44\C\data\
select A
use mytable alias mytable

**absolute path

select A

use \\64.26.49.44\C\data\mytable alias mytable

If the remote computer did not have an IP address that made it part of the domain, you would need to have a user name and password set up on the computer with the static IP and the remote user would need to login to gain access to the vfp table.

Also, if your using a router you would need to open up the firewall because I'm not sure which ports would be used when making this kind of a connection. You would probably need a broadband connection like DSL/Cable modem to get satisfactory performance. VFP uses a sync method to connect to its tables which allows for alot of neat stuff, so you can add, update, and delete records while browsing a table and all changes will be immediately performed, because you would be bound into the table. However, an async method of doing these kinds of thing is less network intensive and is the method used by enterprise type databases like MSSQL, Oracle, MySQL, etc and is much more efficient when large tables and many simultaneous connections are involved, but an async connections does not provide many of the neat feature available in VFP. An async connection is one in which the client and the server operate completely independent of each other, except when the client submit a SQL to the server to fetch, udate, insert, or delete data..

There are also hardware solutions. Most router can be purchased in a version that has Virtual Private Network capabilites built in. These kinds of router can be purchased for less than $200.00 each. This allow remote user to access a server over designated ports via the internet. It also provide high security like encrytion, intrusion detection, authentication, IP packet inspection, etc. If your remote user have access to broadband connections, you might look into this.

Also, you can access your vpf databases/tables via a web server. This might mean some re-write of your application. When using a web server to access a VFP table you are establishing an async kind of relation with the data. For this kind of solution check out articles by Rick Strahl on his terrific West-Wind web site: http://www.west-wind.com.