Hi, John.
>xBase language or local tables? Local tables on a distributed network- agreed, undeniably less efficient. But in a C/S or Web Service model, I know of no inherent inefficiency in the xBase language. Actually, I can demonstrate cases where a vanilla Remote View is more efficient on a WAN than a carefully crafted, optimized Stored Procedure ;-)
When you use a remote view, you're getting a resulset that you can afterward manipulate using xBase commands, but you're not using xBase technology to access the remote data.