petesouthwest wrote:

> Hi
>
> As I said in my original post: My app will be used on users' home
> machines as well as a LAN at work and I need to be able to allow
> them to easly 'transfer' the work ie data they have added and
> amended, back and forth. It needs to be a routine that allows them
> to select their file and then updates only the records they have
> modeified or added automaticaly leaving existing data untouched.

Sorry for my ignorance here but I am still not clear as to exactly what
you need.
When users are working on the LAN do they all store their own work in
the same database file?
If this is the case is it possible for two users to affect the same
record in the database?
In your current process I assume the users save the CSV file to disk or
email to themselves is this correct?
How do the home PC's get the current state of the database? Is it along
the lines that the users select which records they wish to work on and
take a copy of these home with them in a CSV file. Load that up and
then start working. Then when they are finished they produce another
CSV file with the changes and load them onto the LAN app when they are
next in the office. If this is the case what happens if another user
makes a change on the LAN version after the first user has taken their
copy. Being able to handle this situation is where the complexity of
database replication kicks in. If you are sure you do not need to worry
about this situation then there are some tools out there that will do
this that are based around exporting records to files that can be
imported into different databases.
IB LOG MANAGER might be appropriate.
http://www.upscene.com/
Or you could try
INTERBASE DATA PUMP
http://www.clevercomponents.com/

There is also another utility that a member of this list wrote that, if
memory serves me correct, deals with import and export of data in a
similar circumstance. Sorry I can remember the name of the component at
present. But I seem to remember they produced this because of a similar
need to you self. Maybe someone else can point you in the right
direction for that tool.

> I did this using
> SMI components that were reasonable priced. However, this involved
> mapping columns which seems long and error prone for a lot of tables
> with a lot of fields.

Whatever solution you chose there is going to be a certain amount of
SETUP but this should be a one off process.

Regards
Andy