Thanks for the prompt response Ann, and now for my second stupid question.
Opening a live / open database with Deny None flag and reading the first
page - is it likely to cause any problems within the database on NT - I
wouldn't have thought so, but it is worth asking before they go and trash a
live DB?

I'll go and mess about with this in a hex editor for a while to ensure I
know all of the storage lengths of the different datatypes.

Thanks again.

JAC

""Ann W. Harrison"" <aharrison@...> wrote in message
news:5.1.0.14.2.20020311104337.0448c1d0@......

> Jason,
>
> Gstat gets the db statistics by reading the header page
> without going through the engine. All the interesting
> information is in the first 1024 bytes of page 0 of the
> database file. I've added the code below that describes
> the header page. Open the database file for read-only,
> read the first 1024 bytes and map them to a HDR structure.
> I've got some examples, but they're all built into things
> that provide open/read/write and it would take longer
> to pick that apart than write the four lines of code
> necessary...