Hi Steve

In addition to what Ed has posted to you on the issue of record re-use: I have also used this technique very succesfully with the added feature of pre-appending / creating blank (reusuable) records.

For instance, I have one file that has +/- 4 million records in it and about 3000 records get added every day. I have pre-allocated a million or so blank records so that (a) the program re-uses records and (b) does not have to physically create new records. The disk can then be de-fragmented and the file plus index is now contiguous on the server HDD.

I would also think the continous opening and closing of this file is not a good practice and must have a performance impact espcially when being done up to 1000 times per workstation per day (your numbers I think).

FWIW

Jos