People are, by nature, impatient.Wanting an application to run fasterand respond better is a popular featurerequest from users. FoxPro's hallmark characteristic has always been speed. Iremember an ad for DOS FoxPro that con-sisted of a chart comparing its query speed tothe popular DB2 and Sybase mainframe data-base systems. (That a DOS-based databasewould dare compare itself with the big main-frame database systems of the day was amaz-ing.) Microsoft has made sure VFP carried onthis tradition of unsurpassed performance. Similarly, the InterSystems Caché database system claims to be a database with superiorspeed, reliability, and performance. The sim-ilarities don't stop there. VFP has a grass-roots beginning and is a Microsoft nicheproduct with a loyal user base. Caché is aflexible database system that can be used as adatabase for many industries, but has founditself a niche as the most popular databasesystem in the healthcare industry.