is that the network is maintained by hospital staff. The workstations could be on a different subnet than the server, and if someone futzes up security a bit on the network and the workstations cannot see the server for a few days until someone can fix it, then just have the workstations update each other until they can see the server.

For the offline viewer, consider using transaction tables and then do a big batch update when the network is back online.

The fault could be with the server, if someone does something to it, or changes an access password without telling the developers. Heck, some Nurse may have tripped over a network cable and unpluged it, and didn't notice it for hours or days.

Right now it takes Crystal Reports over six hours to do one report, my job is to make it do less than that. The program is mostly written in Excel VBA for now, and the VB conversion is on the way. One big mess, and I am the one to clean it up and get it to work better.