Alex Ip wrote:

> Thanks for the (very concise) response, Helen! I had looked at the
> possibility of using external files to perform this task, but there are
> limitations around the updating or deletion of records which kind of defeat
> the purpose of having them. I was trying to avoid having to mess directly
> with the external files outside Firebird, but it looks like I may have no
> option if I try going down that track. FYI, for this specific application,
> the read-only table would be relatively large (over 30,000 records), but the
> read-write table would be relatively small (around 100 records).

30,000 records are not too much.
If you *really* must do joins over two or more databases and in the same
time avoid BDE and Paradox you should check sqlite (www.sqlite.org)

Regards
Boguslaw