>i want to prevent users from using comands like EDIT/BROWSE to view tables in a database. can someone enlighten me as to how i can achieve this or are there some products available that would achieve the above result.

As Hilmar said, Hallogram sells Cryptor. For what I hear it's a good product for encrypting whole talbes on the fly.

But if you have data security issues I would also recommend a move to SQL Server as a more secure and robust DB. VFP (especial VFP9 but all versions do) work very nicely with SQL Server.