You're saying that the flow through the pipe depends on the backend? Let me use an analogy: We're distributing fluids from a storage tank to a valve in your front yard. The backend is the storage tank. The client is your valve. One fluid is crude oil, the othe is water. Which one of those will get to the spiget faster? I guess what I asking is which one flows through the the pipe faster.

It seems your saying that ADO or XML throughput depends on on the on the backend. Doesn't data density or overhead have anything to do with it?

Choose any backend (SQL 7, DBF). Not all back ends have to be ODBC, right? An INP post file can be a back end. Which one is faster?

>I think that depends on your backend and OLE DB provider.
>
>>Thanks Graig!
>>Would you happen to recall which one gets the data to client the fastest? My guess would be XML because it's text.