>I have a VFP 6 app running on XP clients. The users are in hospital A and the server is in hospital B (across the street). Until 2 months ago the main screen (3 tabs/pages and 15 or so files, no serious data, just lots of little tables, private data sessions) came up in 4 to 6 seconds (I look at SECONDS () in BeforeOpenTables and again at the end of Init). One Monday morning the screen instantiation time shot up to 40 to 60 seconds. After 3 weeks of misery for my users, I got my data moved to the same hospital with the users (the data went onto a PC that my client owns and we put a sign up that said "don't touch the server") and my screen instantiation time went down to 4 seconds. As a test I put up a client in the same hospital with my server and my screen instantiation time went down to under 1 second (i.e., the network where my users sit is no bargin, but the real problem is in the hub/routers/whatever between the 2 hospitals).
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>The network techs gave us a new server in the same hospital with the original server. I let the network techs persuade me to move the production data back to new server in the hospital where my old server sat. Now 2 times out of 3 I get 2 to 3 second screen instantiation and 1 time out of 3 I get 20 seconds screen instantiation.
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>Is the problem purely the network (the junk between the 2 hospitals) or is there a possibility that I can set some kind of buffering/caching in VFP or XP and give my users decent screen instantiation?
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>Tim

Tim,
Thinking of today's HW I think you should check your design rather than network (networking is another issue and fault really might be there - besides HW including cabling it might be viruses like Nachi).
In a hospital environment generally 'live' data is likely not needed at all times (well it has been long I quit my profession but they haven't changed so much). For example mostly at a time a point needs info about a single patient. Once they get it's unlikely patient's records would be edited elsewhere. This make me think of offline views (parametric of course). Once you create they're like any other 'local' tables. You might prevent network traffic a lot using them.
Of course I'd also check network optimization rules like tmpfiles placement.
Probably SQL server is also involved. Then comes the question if you're using stored procedures or not, SPT or RV or ADO etc.
Or are you using no views at all ? If so switching to parameterized views would be the first to consider for me. Instead I might think using COM objects either or a mixture withor w/o IIS maybe. It depends :)
Cetin