All good points guys, but to a newbie to SQL it is ALL a mystery at the start. {grin}

I am gaining understanding fast with your help and reading through the scripts the GUIs have provided plus mandatory visits to w3schools.

In line with Markus' statement, I am ready to leave IBExpert as it is now getting too fluffy for me. Having said that though, I feel it has been invaluable as a getting-started-and-understanding-what-I-am-doing-tool.

I appreciate being able to use it for that basic tutorial value. I have never been one for book-learning, although I have a Degree in Mechanical Engineering, so I must have managed it at some time in my youth. LOL

I much prefer to learn by example and the GUIs gave me that facility without needing to know much (if anything) about how SQL is handled.

I am half way through writing the DBF transfer and learning heaps at this point. The nice thing is it is no longer a struggle, things are flowing, albeit slowly as I need to think things through and understand at each step.

I sincerely doubt I would go to the rigors of FlameRobin though. I am sure there is enough there to do everything, but why not use a more friendly GUI such as IB_SQL? I will be doing mostly hand coded scripts, but the IB_SQL shortcut will stay on the desktop. Maybe it is more hairy-chesterly to use FlameRobin. LOL

Dave