>Thanks for all your help. I am thinking that the static connection vs on the fly connection depends on what and how often the connection is necessary. However Nancy, if I used the static connection how can I test to see if the connection is still valid before the remote tables are acted upon?

Hi Steven,
Any test is useless, because 1ns after the success test result,
the connection can be died.

Send the data and trap the errors.

Fabio