Eric, thanks for all the informative replies. The reason I ask such questions is actually multi part. One part is for the knowledge being as I have no real formal training on this type of application. Another part is due to understanding design considerations. And the big part right now is due to a problem that recently arose and I am hoping to be able to recreate. The problem dealt with ASCII string that I have in the data stream. In my project that I am designing, with a lot of great assistance from the team at IA and some of the really smart people on this forum, I have a group of historical items which is recorded to an SQL table. In this is the said ASCII strings. On a recent run, before our server went south and had to be reinstalled, while running all 9 connected machines, one machine the ASCII string would not update. All the other data was being updated but for some reason not any of the ASCII. This is the second time that this has happened. And it does not follow any specific pattern. The last time it was the machine we refer to as #52, the most recent time it was machine #2. However both times before I was able to get into the actual server where the software is installed something happened that shut down all processes. In the first case it was the log file in SQL and in the second the witness program detected a problem of some sort and caused the IT dept to conceed that the server needed rebooted. When they did it crapped out. So neither time was I able to get on the server and run any of the diagnostics to find out what could be causing the problem. I want to know that as this system grows and becomes fully implimented that this is not going to be a major problem that comes back and bites me in the behind. Ole man Murphy and I are great friends. So I guess another reason for all these questions is for some C.Y.A. I just want to know that I making the best choices possible.