Your observations are correct - VFP is NOT a "client-server" styled application.

However, VFP can certainly be used as a front-end and/or middle-tier to a server such as SQL Server or Oracle or DB2 or other windows-supported database storage systems. Many people here do this as a matter of course and if you come up with specific questions I'm sure that they will answer them for you.

In addition, VFP does afford some capability to minimize traffic across a wire by careful planning/usage of INDEXES. And it is not that much work once you observe the "rules" (check out topics having "rushmore optimization" and "optimizing" in the VFP Help).

It sounds like you already have the application written. If that is the case then I'd say you should first try to take the standard steps to optimize the application INDEXes and ensure that your coding permits Rushmore optimization to operate.
I don't know how much data you're talking about, but people here have related supporting hundreds of users accessing gigabytes of data (across several tables, of course) in a regular (but optimized) VFP application.

good luck


>Hi,
>
>I have a mandate to distribute a VFP application who should work as a client-server one. However I found a bad surprise when analyzing the way that VFP performs a query. A true client-server runs the query against the server and returns the results. Watching the SQL running through a bandwidth sniffer I did verify that the Client is constantly "talking" with the Server and occupying large amounts of bandwidth. I can't deploy the application without solving this problem.
>
>Question: there is way to configure a VFP database to run as a real Client-Server? I appreciate very much some inputs because this will decide if we will use VFP or we will be forced to use another database.
>
>Thank you