Trey:
It's a very conventional select statement - just "select field1, field2 FROM table WHERE ..." etc., and uses an established VFP remote view connection link that has been used successfully in every other related query for a long time. I'm wondering if, like ACCESS (sorry to even mention that name here) there may be a problem with recognizing certain hieroglyphics contained ion the character string but that has not been a problem before in VFP. So I keep wondering whta is wrong this time???

Thnx for your input. /psb